It seems to me that many of the young yeshiva students in the pics linked to above don’t have long sideburns (payot). It seems that some relied on lenient views of which bone is used to determine until where to grow the payot.
It also seems to me that wearing black is purely a European custom of what is formal. Clearly the passages in the Gemara that mention black don’t treat it as Chashuv. The Ben Ish Hai of Baghdad says not to wear black on Shabbat. But in European and Western culture, wearing black is considered dressed up.