Now That is a Knot!

Known for his oversized neckties, Prince Michael of Kent outdoes himself. It's out of proportion and I don't recommend it but I do need to give credit for the largest knot I have seen this century. The matching jacket and cloth cap are a sign of bespoke tailoring.

Very English Shirts by Harvie and Hudson

Andrew Hudson of Harvie & Hudson was in San Francisco this week for his semi-annual visit. His ancestor George Frederick Hudson began the shirtmaker in partnership with Thomas George Harvie three generations ago. The firm is the only remaining Jermyn Street bespoke shirtmaker still owned solely by the founding families.


Harvie & Hudson tends to work principally with English shirting mills like Acorn. The made to measure shirts which are the heart of their business shirts are cut by hand and sewn by machine. And though they can make just about any style that a customer desires, most of their shirts are double cuffed and spread collared.


English makers focus on shirt and necktie colorways that complement the City's gray and blue suits, so their offerings tend towards pink and lilac. And then there's the collaboration with the silk weavers, a practice that's a specialty of Jermyn Street. Once they've chosen shirt patterns for the season, H&H commissions neckties that match their colors exactly, something that can only be done with woven ties. With a woven tie, threads of the precise color can be selected. Printed neckties, on the other hand, cannot be printed with color accuracy.

Conservative suits, black shoes and brightly colored shirts with matching neckties. That's English style the Harvie & Hudson way.

Gray Done Well

I have to admit that I picked this photo up somewhere on Style Forum, neglected to note the source, and now I have no idea how to credit it. I hope the subject of the photo will identify himself because I think he's showing men with high contrast coloring a good way to accessorize a gray suit.

Lower contrast skin and hair would look washed out in this combination but a white shirt and a gray suit make an outstanding pairing for men with dark hair. Here the gray wool necktie adds texture, and the brown oxfords and bitter red socks contribute some discreet color. Very nicely done. The fireplace, bar and dog are gilt on the lily.

To Dimple or Not To Dimple, That Is The Question

Perhaps a majority of the world's best dressed men prefer the large blade of their necktie to emerge undimpled from the knot, like the late Gianni Agnelli in the photograph.

The undimpled necktie was yet another of the style trends spread by observers of the late Duke of Windsor, who never dimpled his. It's a bit more difficult to achieve, and one that is helped by a thick lining in the tie itself.

Do you dimple?

A Satin Necktie

I've written before that I like satin neckties for evening. The combination of a well cut navy or midnight blue suit, a white shirt and a red, light blue or gold satin tie is about as elegant as a man can get without his dinner jacket.

In the photo, Lorenzo Cifonelli (of the Parisian tailoring family) does justice to the look. Though I'd like to think that there's a bit of white linen in his breast pocket that's just fallen out of sight.

The Walker's Shirts

In the film The Walker, costume designer Nic Ede has his lead, played by Woody Harrelson, escort the wives of some of Washington's powerful wearing double breasted suits with questionable shirt and tie combinations.

The drama is one of the few released in 2007 with a male actor in a role that might have displayed elegant dress. Unfortunately, Ede's white collar and cuff version of a ten year old monochromatic talk show look is no better than it was the first time around.


Now there's nothing out of line about dark red or lavendar shirts on a fellow playing the role of a male escort. But Harrelson's character would have demonstrated better clothes sense, in my opinion, with more spread to his collars, neckties that relegated the color of his shirt to a secondary element, and paisley pocket squares in unrelated colors.

Finally Got My Fix

As other Sam Hober necktie customers know, David and Noina Hober announced that they were going on vacation for a few weeks this past August and that vacation somehow turned into a four month hiatus during which they relocated their tie-making from Denver to rural Thailand.

Now, I am all in favor of the Hobers being able to work whereever they wish, particularly since David has promised that the move means the six week wait for a bespoke Hober necktie will be reduced to three because they'll be able to hire accomplished seamstresses in Thailand. But I'm accustomed to regular necktie fixes and I had placed my order for an Atkinson's striped Irish poplin #46 in July. And then the wait began.

When there was no sign of the Hobers in September I bought a couple of bow ties to help tide me over. In October I bought a wool four in hand so my hands would stop shaking. By November I'd begun hyperventilating whenever I thought about neckties and I thought seriously about taking my business back to Charvet. I was only put off by the logistics - I hadn't looked at silks when I was there this year and Charvet has no web site so I'd be reduced to looking at a few swatches every two weeks. Fortunately, by then there were signs of life on the Hober web site.

Well, it took most of six months but I finally got my fix. A couple days ago a tie-sized box with a collectible Thai postage stamp arrived in the mail and my tie was inside. Perfection as usual, at least since we got the direction of the stripes straightened out. I promptly placed another order, for an orange oxford weave, and hopefully things are returning to normal. After all, I need a regular necktie fix.

Delightful Asymmetry

I don't like the half-windsor and the other triangular necktie knots. They're just too regular for me. Instead, give me a slightly asymmetrical four in hand every day. The too-fashionable example in the photo from Robert Talbott is hardly irregular but it's the shape I like. Big enough to fill a cutaway collar but not too big for a tab.

Emulating the late Duke of Windsor, I have my neckties made a bit thicker than normal, so I get a knot about the same size as a half windsor. Or I'll loop the wide end of a ready-made necktie an extra time around the knot to make it a bit larger and shorten the ends at the same time. Either way, the tie hangs just slightly askew, and that degagé air is, in my opinion, the way it should be.

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.

How Many Folds?

I love neckties, particularly solids and simple stripes like these from the atelier of Anna Matuozzo. But not all ties are created equal.

Most neckties are what are called lined three folds, where the silk is folded on each side around the lining. Instead of a lining, seven folds have more folds of silk to add bulk to the tie. The technique uses a lot more expensive silk, which is much of the reason why the style costs about twice as much as a quality three fold. The result is beautiful to hold, but the resulting tie is light, with a tendency to wrinkle at the knot and twist when it's worn. I like the construction for cashmere or wool ties, where the additional weight of the material makes a tie that drapes acceptably. I don't like it for silk.

In my opinion, the best construction is a lined six fold, where the silk is folded twice on each side over the lining. I like it because the additional weight makes the tie hang straighter. As I walk, the tie maintains its dignity, moving with more grace than either a three or a seven fold.

"Wool" Neckties

Autumn begins the season for wool neckties, the best of which are cashmere or a mixture of cashmere and silk (I think of Irish poplin, a weave of silk and wool, as a spring and summer item so I'm not discussing them here). Of the pictured baker's dozen from my closet, eleven fall into the cashmere category, the red tie is pure wool and the light blue solid is camel hair.

The point of "wool" neckties is that they absorb light rather than reflect it, and that feature combined with the visible weave adds interest to combinations built around flannel or tweed jackets. They are particularly effective combined with a paisley or hunting pattern silk pocket square.

Like many men, I learned to appreciate the color of silk neckties first, for some reason that probably had something to do with the opinions of various young women. But I've since learned to be my own critic, and I like the look of wool for Autumn.

Another One Bites the Dust

I mentioned several weeks ago that I got black bean sauce on a new Sam Hober bespoke necktie a couple of hours into its first wearing. "No problem," thinks I, "Tiecrafters to the rescue!" Tiecrafters, if you don't already know, is a New York firm with a well deserved reputation as the necktie cleaner that doesn't actually ruin the necktie in the cleaning process. Having a single tie cleaned is a $21 proposition, including shipping both ways. And the cost is considerably less if you get them dirty in batches.

Well, if I didn't already know that nobody's perfect, I do now. Even Tiecrafters couldn't fix this one. The photo could be better but you can see the remains of a blotch in the center about five dots from the top, another left of center four dots below it, and an especially nasty one on the right side about four dots below that. It doesn't look too bad in the photo but it's not wearable in person.

So another necktie bites the dust. The remarkable thing is that it doesn't happen more often.

By the way, you can also call on Tiecrafters to do necktie shortening and narrowing. They will even make bow ties from your four in hands!

Choosing the Day's Clothes

Hardy Amies, perhaps the first men's clothing designer and the man who had more influence on my dress than any other, wrote that a man should select his clothes with care so he can forget about them for the rest of the day.

Choosing the day's clothes starts with the suit rotation. Suits are not meant to be worn on consecutive days, and one way to ensure that is to rotate them in the closet. I hang recently worn clothing on the right of one closet bar, and take clothes that I'm going to wear from the left side. Moving them along the bar isn't much of a job - I have quite a few suits but there are no more than a dozen in my active city rotation at any particular time.

I start my selection by considering the formality of the day I expect to have. If it's got at least one serious event, I'll choose the first serious suit at the left hand side of the bar. Or, if it promises to be less formal, I'll pull a Friday suit that's less somber.

Next, I choose my shoes. I won't wear a pair that I've worn already that week, and I relate the formality of the shoe to the formality of the suit. That usually means oxfords with worsteds and bluchers or monks with flannels, linen and tweed.

The time-consuming part of the process is choosing a shirt, necktie and accessories. First comes the shirt. I usually choose light blue, yellow or light gray with a blue suit, or pink, cream or blue with a gray one. I don't have to worry too much about rotation as the laundry makes sure I can't wear any single shirt two weeks in a row.

The necktie comes next (I won't spend space on choosing a necktie since I covered that topic earlier this year). Then I choose a pocket square. That's usually white linen if I'm wearing a silk necktie. If I'm wearing a knit or a grenadine it's likely to be colored silk , in a secondary color that relates to my shirt or a color in my suit. Before going any further, I double-check the combination by putting the square in the jacket's breast pocket, holding the shirt and tie up to the jacket and making adjustments until I get a combination that I'm happy with. Sometimes that happens the first time, and once in a while it takes half a dozen tries.

With shirt, tie and square locked in, I go on to select socks that are compatible with my trousers but pick up the color of something I'm wearing above the waist. Finally, I'll choose braces and cufflinks that relate without matching in one way or another, and I'm done. Elapsed time, ten to twenty minutes to combine three (sometimes four) patterns, including socks, and at least that many colors.

White Shirts and Sun Tans

They are fine in the evening but I'm not usually one for white dress shirts for day wear. That's partly because I agree with Hardy Amies, who wrote that they are a bit naff compared to blue or cream, and partly because they seem to wash all the color from my face. But there's one exception, and that's when I have a sun tan.

A tan seems to bring out the best in a white shirt, which is a good thing as white seems to coordinate especially well with the lighter colored suits of summer. Not to mention my favorite summer necktie (pictured), a blue so light that it loses its impact on anything but a white background. Time to order white linen from my shirtmaker.

Charvet in the Afternoon

My Paris shopping didn't begin well. I began by visiting the arcades at the Palais Royale where I learned that L'Escalier d'Argent is already closed for holiday and later confirmed that scheduling will keep me from seeing shoemaker Dimitri Gomez. But then I arrived at la place Vendôme and Charvet.

Charvet (there is no web site) is a well-respected shirtmaker and one of the leading sources for bespoke neckties in the world. The store is quietly beautiful - simply being there makes the day seem better - and the staff is helpful without being obtrusive.

So much of the Charvet experience is near perfection - like the pictured silk robes - that I'm unable to understand why the bespoke necktie selection process remains so cumbersome. The silks cannot be viewed in a rational fashion. Instead, the customer provides some general guidance such as "foulards on a black ground" and in due time a selection emerges from downstairs. Then repeat - it's a process that puts a damper on discovery. Someday I hope to learn of silks that I didn't know to ask for.

But, no matter. Today the shop had a wonderful selection of semi-solid bow ties, silk knit four in hands, and summer cotton pocket squares. Outside, the sun began shining.

Linen Shirts with Poplin Ties

I've come to love linen shirts in warm weather. Their texture gives them great visual interest and they breathe. What more can a man ask of his shirt?

The first photo is a small cream check with an Irish poplin necktie. I enjoy Irish poplin's sheen against the relative dryness of the shirt.


The second photo is a light blue checked linen paired with a tan and blue Irish poplin. Of the shirts I've packed for this trip, more than half are linen. And more than half of the accompanying neckties are Irish poplins. When you find something that works for you, work it hard.

Satin Ties for Evening

David Hober of Sam Hober sent me this photo of a gold herringbone last week and it reminded me of the pleasures of satin neckties for evening. I know that's not necessarily a logical connection. A herringbone is not a satin. But it's bright enough to fill the same function - I wore a close relative of this tie to dinner at Le Gavroche in London not long ago with a navy mohair suit and a white shirt.

A lounge suit with some sheen to the fabric combined with a white shirt and a satin tie are about as formal as you can get without packing black tie, and, at least for that trip, black tie would have required lugging an additional suitcase.

The Hobers expanded their offerings of solid ties in silk failles (grosgrain), royals & satins last month. I prefer my satins in dark red, gold and Pacific blue but the slate, copper and forest green versions might be a bit more off beat. Secondary colors tend to make more interesting neckties. Worth a look.

Sources: Four In Hand

I discovered Jonathan Fischer's Four In Hand site when I was searching for one of Begg's paisley cashmere scarves for my wife. Alex Begg Scottish cashmere scarves are among the very finest I've ever seen but the patterned versions are hard to find. FIH had several.

That led me into a series of emails with Jonathan, the entrepreneur behind the site. I like his assortment of linen pocket squares with hand rolled edges ($24), the selection of Marinella neckties ($155) and the variety of short (56") neckties that accompany the more common regular (59") and long (63") lengths.

My first order was processed the same day and sent by DHL, Four In Hand's preferred shipper, with a tracker.

The company will accept neckties back within 14 days of receipt for a full refund of the merchandise price. Suits and outerwear can be returned within ten days for a full refund of the price paid for merchandise, and up to 14 days for a store credit. Unless otherwise arranged shipping costs are not credited.

The Necktie Wardrobe, Part 2

Yesterday's essay discussed solid colored neckties and today's will consider patterned versions.

We'll start with stripes. A man probably needs at least four two-color striped neckties, and at least one of those ought to be Irish poplin for its sheen. Block stripes (above, from Ben Silver) and ribbon stripes (as shown below, from O'Connell's) are flexible styles that coordinate easily with patterned suits and shirts. Navy and gold, navy and pacific blue, navy and red, and red and gold are classic color combinations.

For serious occasions, there should be two Macclesfield ties. Mini-dots are discreet and fairly easy to find. White or silver dots on black and the same on wine are useful combinations.

There should also be a couple small checks, either shepherd's or houndstooth in navy on cream and gray on cream like the one below, from Brooks Brothers, as well as a paisley or two (get the paisleys in gummed silk if you can find them but I haven't seen one for about ten years) in a large print.

Next, there should be a couple of non-directional foulards or club ties, one of which should have a ground that complements navy suits. The other should pair well with gray suits. Sportsmen may choose prints featuring ducks or Labrador retrievers but most men will be better served by heraldic symbols, like the pictured tie from Henry Poole, or small flowers, like the tie at the bottom from O'Connell's.

Finally, most men should have four seasonal ties, two linen (or silk and linen) with tan and blue grounds for summer and a gray and a blue ground cashmere or wool challis for cooler weather. The patterns should be similar to the styles discussed above. These ties are to provide some different textures with which to vary your look.

So that's it, a dozen neckties that, combined with the dozen solids and semi-solids from yesterday, comprise a fine basic wardrobe for a well-dressed man.

The Necktie Wardrobe, Part 1

A suit-wearing man needs a minimum of about two dozen neckties. About a dozen of those should be solids and semi-solids with textures that add surface interest. Solids make the most flexible neckties because their relative inobtrusiveness makes them amenable to frequent wearing, and they make it easy to complement a pattern in a suit, shirt, or both.

Knitted silk neckties, like the ones shown above from Paul Stuart, are a wardrobe staple in warm weather, and on less formal occasions (their square bottoms make them more casual). Black, navy and dark red are the most useful colors.

Grenadines, which are also knitted silk but in a tighter weave, are more formal than knits. Pictured above, and also from Paul Stuart, they may be worn where-ever a man might wear a lounge suit. Consider black, navy, burgundy and silver.

A few more solids should round out the collection. A man can never have too many navy neckties and an oxford weave solid (shown above in Pacific blue, another useful color, from Ben Silver) should be one of them.

Finally, there should be a couple ribbed solids in steel blue and in charcoal with a blue tint, either ottomans (the latter have a more visible stripe, as pictured above, from Paul Stuart) or twill (below, from Ben Silver).

Tomorrow we'll look at a selection of patterned ties.