Summer Neckties

I've always worn pastel-colored neckties in summer, and this year I added a new twist. In addition to donning the springtime colors of nature, like magenta, teal, fuschia and mint, I put several ties with white, silver and cream-colored grounds on my tie rack.

Now neckties with light grounds had given me a lot of trouble in the past. I'm a firm believer that a man's tie should be darker than his shirt, and ties with a lot of white didn't seem to leave much room for originality in that regard. I wore them with white shirts or I didn't wear them.

But, as with most things, there are a couple of tricks to wearing neckties with light colored grounds. First off, it helps to limit the white in a white warp necktie to no more than half of the surface area, like the ties in the photos (both are from Ben Silver). That changes the visual dynamic so that pastel shirts with white in the weave become respectable mates, as do light-toned shirts with white collars and cuffs generally so long as they complement the other colors in the tie.


Silver and cream-based combinations are even easier. Ties with small alternating patterns in combination, such as sky blue and silver, look like a solid from a distance, and they are well matched with shirts in lighter colors that have patterns of a different scale. And bold bar stripes in cream and another color are at home atop a variety of patterned shirts with a white ground of their own.

So, if you don't wear them already, try adding a few neckties with white, cream and silver grounds to your rotation while there are still summer days to wear them.