Bow Ties and Cocktails

Consider wearing a bow tie to cocktails in the early evening. To me, the look is a bit more interesting than a long tie because a bow evokes evening clothes when it's worn with a dark suit.

Blue flannel chalk stripe suit, dark brown cap toe half boots, white on blue striped shirt with white collar and cuffs, lilac and white cotton pocket square and a bow with lilac flowers on a blue ground.

Tie Space

Tie space has an influence on what we wear. Suits used to have three button fronts, and vests. Bow ties were much more popular than they are today, as they fit neatly into the smaller triangle of shirt left above a vested suit like the man on the right in the illustration. And then the vest died.


Without a vest, some keen eye observed that moving the button point from the top down to the middle button on a jacket did a better job of showing off the four in hand necktie. And so the two button suit and four in hand began a thirty year reign as the most popular design while only formal wear saved the bow tie from extinction.

But two button fronts are not necessarily the best choice when there's no tie to cover the shirt. And with fewer men wearing neckties, we're seeing a resurrection of higher closing fronts, with three and even four buttons. The late English designer Hardy Amies predicted this trend (the photos are of his designs) three decades ago. Like many geniuses he was a little early.

Little Bits

Four In Hand is having a necktie and cashmere sale that includes Begg's cashmere scarves like the chocolate one in the photo.


Cravate Royale is also having a sale, in this case on its superb bow ties. Pictured is the Royal Woven Kent mini-basketweave in navy silk with blue and purple paisleys. $45.95 each while they last.


And here is a photo of the pork pie hat that I wrote about last week, after a day's hard work.

Culture Shocks

Walking around Paris one is struck by the juxtaposition of the traditional and the modern, like the courtyard in the Palais Royale that the Ministry of Culture has elected to fill with black and white striped columns for no particular reason.



A smaller culture shock comes from the presentation of pre-tied bow ties in the best shops in Paris. They are tied by hand with a buckle back so they can be donned and removed without tieing or untieing the knot. Of course, the buckle would be a real faux pax with a wing collar, not that we have many of those to worry about any longer.

I find this a bit odd in that we are advised not to leave our four in hands knotted, but the bow ties in several Paris stores are sold this way and who am I to argue? I'll wear it this way once, with my blue mohair suit, before I untie it. It would never do to find that I can't put Humpty Dumpty together again without so much as a single wearing.

Sources: Cravate Royale

There's a lot of ordinary product around these days but it's rare to find new sources for the good stuff. For very high quality bow ties ($90), ascots ($135) and pocket squares ($60), add Cravate Royale to your web favorites.

Bow tie wearer Anit Patel realized a life-long dream in 2006 when he opened his virtual doors. He started with a limited selection of excellent silks that are sewn in England, and he's currently working to expand his offerings with a line of cuff links based on Indian designs from the time of the Moghul Empire.

Patel's bow ties are made as 2 ¾ inch width butterflies, adjustable to fit neck sizes from 14" to 18". I'd stayed away from butterfly style ties my entire life as I found them difficult to tie, but I was won over by Cravate Royale's web site video on bow tie tying. It's the most useful instruction on its subject that I've ever seen, and now I'm a convert.

Orders received by 3PM are shipped the same day. Customers may return any product for exchange or refund within 30 calendar days provided that the merchandise is in its original condition.

Sources: bowties.com

Apart from their role as an integral component of Winston Churchill's daily dress, bow ties have had a long and, please forgive me, spotty history. They began to achieve popularity during the 1920s, peaked during the 30's, declined and then peaked again during the 60's. By that measure we're a decade overdue for their return which means they'll probably be featured with double breasted suits when those are resurrected in ready to wear collections in the next year or two.

If and when bows do come back, it will be partly due to the efforts of Randy Hanauer, whose South Carolina company bowties.com was established in 1986 to make white linen pocket squares. I like Hanauer's modern business approach - customers choose a pattern online from hundreds of silks and the company makes a bow tie in one of several shapes, a pocket square, ascot, vest, cummerbund and/or D-ring belt to order for about the same price as a ready to wear choice of similar quality. Prices range from $50 or so for most belts and bows to $125 for a typical cummerbund or ascot and $300 for a vest.

Unlike most ready to wear bow tie suppliers, Hanauer offers bows in several shapes, including butterfly, diamond end, and three varieties of straight, including the wide 2 1/2" paddle shape worn by the late Duke of Windsor. You can get an even more personal service from Charvet of course, and choose from a wider variety of silks, but it's more expensive and considerably less convenient unless you happen to live in Paris.

Once you place an order, bowties.com's service is quite good. My only complaint is that no-one at the company appears to be responsible for answering emails. I've sent half a dozen to the address supplied on the site over the years and never received a single response. Since everything else works I don't worry about it.

Bow Ties

Winston Churchill would have been surprised to learn about Dress for Success author John T. Malloy's attitude towards bow ties. He wrote, “If you wear a bow tie, you will never be taken seriously, and no one will trust you with important business.” But then I've never taken much of what Malloy wrote very seriously.

As you probably know, Churchill wore a navy bow with white dots daily and most people considered World War II to be fairly important business. Dial M for Murder's John Williams has the look down in the photo. The tie should be worn with either a sweater or a vest, to minimize the amount of empty shirt front below the bow (one of the reasons a vest is better than a cummerbund with a dinner jacket), or with a double breasted jacket for the same reason. The look makes a fine change of pace, particularly in warm weather and particularly with a seersucker suit. That may be why bow ties have remained somewhat more popular in the American South than in the rest of the United States.

Most people know that wearing a clip-on bow tie is a sin comparable to crossing one's legs and exposing bare calf above short socks. I've seen speculation that the bow tie is disappearing because most men know not to wear clip-ons but don't know how to tie the real thing. That may well explain the appearance of the four in hand tie at the Academy Awards among male star wanna-bes who have to dress themselves. But tieing a bow is not difficult to learn, requiring a minimum of manual dexterity and perhaps fifteen minutes in front of a mirror with Ben Silver's diagram.

Charvet in Paris makes some of the best bow ties in the world but they don't yet offer them on the web. For some obscure reason, we are fortunate to have several U.S. bow tie specialists with electronic shopping sites. R. Hanauer has made me several ties to order.

With Spring approaching, consider adding a bow tie to your repertoire. It's a fine look for a stylish man.