The Internet Necktie

The internet has done a number of very positive things for menswear (where would the travelling Hong Kong and Neapolitan tailors be without it?), and it has had as many unexpected effects. Take, for example, color. Online merchants report that colored neckties are the ones that sell online, the brighter the better, which makes perfect sense considering that the customers are looking at photographs that give little or no sense of texture, hand, finish, or whether a tie is pressed flat and lifeless. But color is easy to see.

The sad thing about this of course is that it is the most elegant neckwear that suffers, if neckties can be said to feel pain. Grenadines, cashmeres and madders lose out to brightly colored silks, irrespective of the fact that a man's command of texture has more of an impact on how well he dresses. Just as Mr. Clark Gable's tweed jacket is more interesting than a black twill, so his subdued madder necktie complements it better than a bright silk reppe might.

Inevitably our computer and phone displays will eventually become capable of showing texture but for now the internet necktie is a brightly colored thing.