I think that your attention to the details of ties is indefensibly elitist of you.
I only judged him negatively after I, with his girlfriend's agreement, explicitated his bad tie choice, and he persisted in error. Ignorance is no fault! You note that I disparaged the knot, not the person.
Also, I totally knew you'd say that.
I was thinking of the argument/discussion you two had about how to dress for the theatre last night.
It's elitist to expect people to dress up to go to the opera.
And really, would you have worn w-lfs-n's shirt in public? I mean.
And really, would you have worn w-lfs-n's shirt in public? I mean.
What?
The real question is, is there any defense for any knot besides the four-in-hand?
9: I'm just asking Washerdreyer if he agrees with me that the shirt you wore to the theater last night was an embarassment.
I have heard that the bowline is the King of Knots.
So what is with all these misappropriations of Finnish culture? Well the one with tractors was true to form, the spinning leek girl, not so much.
At any rate you gotta love the whole noside.com catalogue.
1. Assuming that google only yields correct information, then this is a four in hand knot. That's how I tie my ties. How else would you do it, you ponce?
2. I had to look up "four in hand." I think knowing the meaning of term, let alone using using it, is indefensible. And, yes, I'm aware of what you're about to write, w-lfs-n. You ponce.
SCMT, you were doing so well with point 1, and with point 2 you blew it.
Is "last night" in 5 a misplaced modifier? Is an adaption of a Michael Caine/ Steve Martin film into a musical really "the theater"? I say yes to the second.
I assume that w-lfs-n intends to defend the Windsor or half-Windsor. Personally, I don't see the point -- they're harder to tie and look unattractively bulky.
The four-in-hand knot is a sartorial Hitler moustache.
(Bracket, for now, the fact that a Hitler moustache is a sartorial Hitler moustache.)
It's elitist to expect people to dress up to go to the opera.
There is no time at which trousers do not matter.
I don't know how to make a half-windsor small enough to make a tie look good in a thin collar, and I don't know how to make a four in hand wide enough to look good in a spread collar. I thought this was why we had different types of knots.
Ben, you must realize that the essence of tie-tying is knowing the perfect knot for the tie at hand. This very morning at a wedding I wore a fairly thick [side-to-side and front-to-back] and not very long tie -- which is a beautiful one, by the way, and far nicer than I really can afford -- and any knot other than the "four in hand" [this is also known as "the normal way to tie a tie"] would have been ridiculous. The idea that any single knot is suitable or unsuitable for all possible ties suggests dillettantism.
There is no time at which trousers do not matter.
slol? Anyway, I was trying to provoke B, because I get grumpy when people's private IM conversations spill into comments.
I assume that w-lfs-n intends to defend the Windsor or half-Windsor. Personally, I don't see the point -- they're harder to tie and look unattractively bulky.
I agree on the windsor, it's an awful and impractical tie: a pain to tie, ostentatiously wide and if you're taller than average, it usually doesn't leave the narrow end long enough to slide into the loop (I hate that!). The half windsor isn't nearly as bad, and it's the one I'd recommend to anyone who has to wear ties on a daily basis.
My thoughts on the four-in-hand: it's certainly not indefensible; it's the knot for people who've never been shown how to tie a tie. It intuitive, unties easily, and if you have a narrow collar and thick tie, it's definitely a way to go. But on a stout fellow with a thin tie and a wide collared shirt? Bordering on ridiculous, for sure.
19 was me. (on preview, sorry, SB; I didn't mean to take extravagant offense)
Now, to the point at, as it were, hand. You are all wrong. There is no intrinsically preferable knot, nor is there any intrinsically deprecated knot. You must, grasshopper, match the knot to the tie and the collar you are wearing.
A tie of adequate fabric and cut will look exactly right with a four-in-hand, producing a triangle that fits neatly in the space of a button-down collar and a proper dimple in the depending portion of the tie.
If you are wearing a thin (i.e., cheap) tie, you can make up for it a little bit by tying one of the windsor-y knots. But in truth, this will produce only an inadequate patch on your sorry situation. Cheap ties are not only thin, but also short, and you will end up with a bit in the back that won't reach the keeper.
Your only reason for tying a windsor-y knot is if you're wearing a broad, spread collar, and your knot needs to take up more space to cover the gap in the top of your shirt.
Anyone who's set to maintain that you can't wear a button-down collar with a blazer or suit is, quite literally and non-judgmentally, un-American.
</Jeeves>
That is, you are all wrong except Chris Brody, who beat me to the punch.
Assuming that google only yields correct information, then this is a four in hand knot. That's how I tie my ties. How else would you do it, you ponce?
I only ever learned full and half windsor, and only ever use half windsor, which works well for the arbitrary tie/shirt combination, where the source of ties and shirts is my closet (excepting one tie which would probably be too thick front/backwise but which I never wear anyway and the reason for whose possession by me I cannot fathom).
the reason for whose possession by me I cannot fathom.
*applauds*
Somehow I doubt the Finnish/Riverdance thing will take off quite as majestically as the "Numa Numa" song. But the anime girl with the leek was pretty cute.
22: Nothing I said didn't refer to something that happened on the site, actually. So there.
Anyway, SB, I'm really sorry, but I honestly expect that you're about the last person in the world who could *really* offend me. I realize mine is an unrequited love, but that only makes it purer.
The morning I took my oral exams I searched online for "how to tie a tie", found a page with diagrams, realized the diagrams were made to be read while looking in a mirror, printed out one of them, went to the mirror, struggled to tie the tie, and rushed out the door.
Also I think I love slolerner a little bit, too.
I probably ought to learn how to tie a tie.
I only know the four-in-hand way, which my dad taught me for my bar mitzvah. He learned it from his brother-in-law on his wedding day; before that he had never had to wear a tie.
And congratulations to eb on presumably passing your orals! Or if not, internet sympathy.
For some reason I read 31 as if it had taken place this morning. I'll shut up now.
All of the people advocating matching the knot to the tie/shirt are exactly right.
Question: I have noticed that the two hipster-ish/fashionable men at my office have started tying their ties so that they are shorter than they should be. Like, their ties end at least an inch before their belts, if not more. This seems to be a new affectation and isn't an "I don't care" look because they wear very nice shirts and ties. What's up with that? I think it looks bad.
Is it part of a more general 80s-ish look?
39: Ugh, that sounds awful -- I've only seen that sort of thing amongst the hipster kids, and it only (barely) works if it's a thin tie on a very skinny person.
One of the great things about men's working fashion is that there are good solid set of rules that have worked since the beginning of time. If you're out messing around at night do whatever you want, but if you're at work, you mess with them at your peril. The peril being you look like a doofus, I suppose.
40: It's not 80s. The 80s was the narrow tie, no? Wasn't the short broad tie the 1940s? At least, it is in all the Bogart films.
I think their ties are meant to be ironically short.
But they're hipsters, so yeah, they look doofusy. And not in the ironic way they want to, but actually, verifiably doofusy. Doofusy simpliciter, as it were.
F#%king hipsters. They'd better not walk across my lawn.
Nothing I said didn't refer to something that happened on the site, actually.
Whoops. Sorry, B.
I realize mine is an unrequited love, but that only makes it purer.
I'm going to be putting the lotion in the basket, aren't I.
32 -- What am I, chopped liver?
Fuck ties. The Finns seriously deserve a post all for themselves, not only for this, but also for this.
Apocalyptica is pretty meh (though I do like that cover).
Stewart Voegtlin on Apocalyptica. Also, tinyurl links are considered harmful around here.
That performance seems to have a lot of mistakes.
I endorse the idea that a different knot can may a particular tie on a particular shirt work. I learned four-in-hand from my father, single-Windsor from my brother. With the thin ties of the sixties, a Windsor was appropriate and filled the collar notch well, while lying fairly flat. From the time I was about seven, I tied one at least once a week until I was grown up. When I was in the Army and we put on Class As, the olive drab suit with a tie, I found my company was filled with guys who didn't know how to tie them. You needed to be inspected in it for leave (and on the way back in). I think one time I tied ten different guys' ties in the space of about ten minutes.
In the seventies, ties got huge, as most of us remember. The Windsor still worked, because everything was supposed to be big, although with a double Windsor and bulky fabric, the knot could be the size of a woman's fist. My dad got to wondering in the seventies if his old ties from the forties might be back in fashion, so we had a look. But not only were the patterns all wrong, but the shape was too. A forties tie broadened rapidly towards its tip, a seventies tie tapered much more gradually. My dad always wore his forties-style, tip about four inches up from belt buckle, held with a tack or clip. My brother and I wore ours to brush the belt, never clipped, back length tucked in the label band on the front length.
I started wearing four-in-hand again in the eighties, to get a smaller knot and save some ties otherwise too short. I have to admit I also was emulating the portraits of old-time lawyers like John W. Davis and Felix Frankfurter; I was trying to look like I was ready to defend Plessy, I guess. Gahh!
Ties come in lengths; if yours are too short, look for a longer one. I have one very long tie, and with it I use a knot called a Shelby, unusual in that it starts with the tie laid outer surface against your collar. It makes a very nice symetical flat vee, and is wide to boot. I use this now in preference to a Windsor.
51: Shelby, eh? I'm a rather short man, so I have the opposite doofus problem to that of the hipsters. I'll have to look into this "Shelby" you recommend.
28: You applaud the use of "whose" when the referent is an inanimate object? What kind of stubborn pedantry is that?
28: You applaud the use of "whose" when the referent is an inanimate object? What kind of stubborn pedantry is that?
What? Among whom is that practice not completely acceptable? What do you say, "which's"?
"the posession of which" perhaps would work. Of course, that only makes sense if your tie has not feelings. And asserting that is a grave insult indeed.
What do you say, "which's"?
"Of which," obviously. Though I would have used a "thereof" instead.
You applaud the use of "whose" when the referent is an inanimate object? What kind of stubborn pedantry is that?
It wasn't any kind of pedantry, but rather appreciation for Ben's tasty syntax bombe, for the likes of which he is justly famous.
"Of which," obviously. Though I would have used a "thereof" instead.
So instead of (contrived sentence alert!) "the bar whose address is such and such", you would say "the bar of which the address is such and such"? I don't believe it for the time it would take you to say "Jack Robinson".
44: Oh, don't apologize, you'll break my heart!
And I am not a serial killer. You don't want to make accusations like that, you know. They might . . . make . . . me . . . angry.
for the likes of which he is justly famous.
Et tu, Standpipe?
45: No, no. You're my homey, remember?
57: Of course I would not say your contrived sentence with "which," but your actual sentence in 27, which already contained two instances of "which," would work just fine with another. But like I said, I would have used "thereof" instead.
What do you say, "which's"?
We're introducing a restrictive clause, so we want "the bar that's address is such and such".
Slol, shawl collars? Really?
For your dinner jacket? Yes, a shawl collar. Remember, the context was not how to look flash, or fashionable, but appropriate.
Slol is also someone who thinks that you can wear formal trousers—you know, with the stripe down the side—to the symphony and not be mistaken for an employee.
Ben is trying to explain that I'm not a hippie.
Boy, from the heights to the lowest of bars in a single thread.
A hippy¹ is made of poo. What a hippie² is made of is still a matter of conjecture.
¹ Plural "hippies"
² Plural also "hippies"
SB -- I didn't mean "stubborn pedantry" in a negative sense! But a tasty syntax bombe (nice phrase, by the way) requires that every damn archaic rule be followed to the hilt, no?
I'm with slol. Shawl collar on the tux. We're not in high school anymore, people; you're not going to prom.
What's wrong with a shawl collar? Not that there's anything wrong with regular notched lapels, either. The main thing in a dinner jacket is just that it shouldn't be polyester, and it should darn well fit.
TDMP, I should have clarified that my applause was an act not of first-order but second-order appreciation. The flavor of such a bombe explodes my grammar thingum, and Ben knows this, and I know that he knows, &c turtles all the way down. I take us to be playing a longitudinal game in which Ben drops the bombes and I first-order complain. But, I'm also watching the game as it's played, and I like to give a cheer when it's played well.
Having written all this, I'm realizing that it doesn't address your comment directly, or at all. Hmm.
oh good god. Windsor knots. Button down collars. Black tie at the opera. Have I died and gone to Noove Hell or something?
ye fish and blood pills. shawl collars. it gets worse.
Ian D-B gets it right.
I'm partial to the half windsor, though I tie them so infrequently I have to stand in front of internet instructions to get them right.
If you are wearing a thin (i.e., cheap) tie
Ahem, this depends on the period. I have some pricey ties that violate this, admittedly purchased around 1990. I suppose it's time to clear out my closet.
Also, this thread has cleared up some mistaken impressions. I thought eb was a girl a woman. And I'd gleaned the impression from skimming recent comments that IDP was pseudonymous Weiner, but the stint in the british army (along with the long history of tie tieing) clearly puts the lie to that.
Why the British army? USA, as it happens, but I'm curious where the empression came from. Please don't go back and look; I'm just curious about off-the-top-of-head impressions.
60: Well, OK then.
62: Weird. It doesn't look at all acceptable written out but I'm sure I have heard such a thing said and understood it immediately.
ye fish and blood pills. shawl collars. it gets worse.
Tell him I'll knock his leek about his pate.
Without taking a position on shawl collars, since I have no such position, let me question the argument of 63. I take it that 63 argues: Fashion X is worn well by Cary Grant. Therefore, it will be worn well my other men. But this can't be right, since Cary Grant wears well, inter alia, a suit that he wore into an active shower and continued to wear after emerging from said shower.
Not to reactivate the debate about what degree of formality is appropriate for the opera, really, but...oh, heck, I guess I am reactivating that debate.
This last year I had cheap-o season tickets to the Met; I went to eight shows. The only people wearing shawl collars were a) seated on the ultra-expensive Mezzanine level and b) over 60 years old, OR c) overdressed.
Maybe the shawl collar would be the Standard Appropriate Male Garb for a Met benefit or Opening Night--but that's way above my subscription level.
meaning no disrespect, I read TDMP (a lá #72) as "T-Dump", and find it hilarious...
I was at the opera last week (cheap seats in the back), and polo or more casual button-down shirts and dockers were very common. Some other men had on ties and sportcoats, a few had on suits, and there were no tuxes to be seen.
Incidentally, for those in the D.C. area, Rossini's L'Italiana in Algeri at the Washington National Opera is incredibly good. Juan Diego Flórez, a really fantastic tenor, has his final two performances this Wednesday and Friday, you should try to catch it before he leaves. If you're under 35, there are really cheap tickets available through the Generation O program.
I can see I have been confusing. My original post on this subject was meant to be about propriety, not about having A Look. In fact I was specifically writing against the idea of men having A Look, as it had been previously established that men who had A Look were to be regarded with suspicion. (Ogged (pbuh) put it more succinctly.)
In other words, I was trying to explain how to dress properly without looking like one of them.
Proper dress may not in fact have any style. As FL at some point said, if Brooks Brothers sell it, you can safely wear it. Brooks Brothers are of course famous for taking the term "sack suit" all too literally. (Brooks Brothers are still relatively inexpensive. Rich boys like Labs can wear Hickey Freeman and achieve a similar, but much better looking, effect.)
In contrast, men such as dsquared, which is to say, boys who work in the City, like to wear pinched waists and pinstripes. This makes you look like an extra from Guys and Dolls. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with that, it's A Look, and Looks are fine if you can carry them off. I was trying to explain, as I say, how to dress properly without having A Look.
When I said what I said about formal trousers and dinner jackets, I was trying to describe what is acceptable evening wear in America. I am agnostic on the question of whether it is per se appropriate for the opera.
Also, on reflection, I realize that knocking dsquared's leek about his pate would take a while because.
62: "That's" isn't really an option. Even if it were, the restriction of "whose" to animate referents is obsolete and anybody who sincerely demands it ought to consider pulling that stick out of his or her ass.
72: It's a wonderful game, and I'm sorry I dragged it down. My nitpicking came off as a little more heavy-handed than intended.
80: Great. I'm going to become known as "teh dump," aren't I?
82: A quibble with your original post. You speak out against soft shirts with evening wear, on the grounds that 'you are not Bertie Wooster'. I don't know what you are thinking of as the alternative to a soft shirt, but aren't all modern shirts, whether for formal wear or not, soft by the 1920s-era Wodehouse definition? I think the standard evening shirt, at that point, was something starched so firmly that you could hold it by one end and it wouldn't fold or droop.
You speak out against soft shirts with evening wear
Right, well, soft and hard are relative judgments. What I mean is, you want a shirt with a starched, pleated front that by today's standards is a lot harder than your conventional dress shirt. Again, people now wear different shirts, particularly if said people are Hollywood types, with dinner jackets. If you want to look like a Hollywood type, that's your call. I'm just trying to save you the indignity.
Hmmph to you, Mr. BrummelSlol.
I suppose that my point was that because there are vanishingly few occasions in today's America for which a tuxedo is appropriate, the shawl collar jacket has taken the tux's place at many of those formal occasions--thus making the shawl collar jacket TOO formal for many formerly formalish occasions. Such as the opera.
I thought a jacket with a shawl collar was a type of tuxedo jacket, rather than something at a different level of formality. But I shouldn't talk about men's clothes, or, really, womens clothes. I really don't know what I'm talking about once I get outside of scraps of information picked up from mystery novels.
I take it that 63 argues: Fashion X is worn well by Cary Grant. Therefore, it will be worn well my other men. But this can't be right,
because slol had previously argued that one isn't, after all, Cary Grant (nor is one Humphrey Bogart).
Speaking of mystery novels, any clue as to why Google has a silhouette of Holmes up on its main page? Is it Detective Day again already?
When I went from practicing to publishing, suits became superfluous. The whole floor was lawyers in cubicles or offices; coat and tie were still expected, but not suits. Ideal conditions for fashion experiments — Hey! We're Research Attorneys, lets research fashion! — so we conducted some. Friend of mine and I fooled around with bowties for weeks, for instance. They're fun to learn to tie and adjust. Then we went business casual and before you knew it everybody looked like Ogged's type 3.
It is, per Google, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's birthday.
Someone should break out the Ouija board and see if he's trying to get through.
"That's" isn't really an option.
I hate to quibble, TDMP, but you're wrong—wrongity-wrong. Unless you meant to say, uncontroversially, that there are instances where one has no choice but to use "that's". Of course there are such instances, my example above being one.
Even from beyond the grave, some sort of Slac/kewa/re install should make communicating easy. If he has anything to say to us.
You speak out against soft shirts with evening wear, on the grounds that 'you are not Bertie Wooster'.
IIRC Jeeves specifically forbids soft-bosomed shirts. Possibly toward the beginning of The Inimitable Jeeves.
Slol's post notes that; he speaks from the perspective of one who is with Jeeves, against Bertie. On this issue, however, time appears to have rendered its verdict for Bertie.
I thought eb was a girl a woman.
I find this surprising, but perhaps only mildly so.
97: I was under that misimpression for a while as well, having mixed you up with our other two-letter-lowercased-initials in a vowel-then-consonant pattern commenter, ac.
Well, so I don't appear so hot at keeping people straight while skimming comments. Weiner is that transexual philosophy prof in texas, right? And w-lfs-n is the 12 year old phd prodigy in southern ca?
Black tie isn't necessary at the opera. But it does bother me, goddamnit, that people wear polos and dockers. Then again, I think people shouldn't wear polos and dockers, period.
Speaking of inappropriate, I saw a little girl in the airport yesterday who couldn't have been more than 4 or 5 wearing what could only be described as a "flirty" translucent bikini top with a really tight skirt. It was the most sexualizing outfit I have ever seen on a child and SO inappropriate for taking your little girl to a public place full of strange men. I wanted to smack her parents over the head.
men such as dsquared, which is to say, boys who work in the City, like to wear pinched waists and pinstripes
I remember when I had one of those, a waist that is.
102: I so want to believe that the parents didn't put her in that outfit, but that instead the little girl had gotten it into her head that it was "princessy" or something, and that the skirt was one she'd outgrown but refused to give up, and that the parents were too tired to fight it, or didn't know how to explain "that's too sexy" to a kid that age, or something.
I'm almost certainly wrong, but I want to believe that.
Perhaps related to 102 and 104: I wandered into Forever 21 for the first time a couple of weeks ago and was struck by the thought that all of the patterns and shapes were more appropriate for ten-year-olds than for the adult women who were shopping there.
It was very princessy - she might have thought she looked like Ariel from The Little Mermaid or something. I'm all for letting kids pick their outfits even if it means they leave the house with a striped shirt and plaid pants, but I think parents need to at least set boundaries like "this is fine for dress-up but when you leave the house, you have to have a shirt that covers your stomach", which I think you can do without having to explain "too sexy".
Bad parents! Bad!
Often you can tell something about the parents' attitude by what they are wearing. I.e., if mom is also wearing bikini top and low-riders, well.
106: Agreed. "You have to cover your tummy" or "you'll be cold in that" or whatever is a necessary phrase. I agree. Bad parents. If not for oversexifying their little girl, then for being uncreative and foolish.
Comity!
I don't pay in 51 has got it right. The winsor knot with some seventies ties were scary.
The only knot I know is the four in hand. I don't use ties enough to learn any newly fashionable knot. If I was ben's old roomate I would just buy new shirts and/or ties.
Ideal for the opera. And you don't have to worry about learning to tie knots.
Ideal for the opera. And you don't have to worry about learning to tie knots.
Get thee behind me, malicious and unpredictable anti-spam filter!
If I was ben's old roomate I would just buy new shirts and/or ties.
Would you be able to employ the subjunctive?
102 et seq:
I'm a bit of a prude, but the clothes they sell for little (as in, under 10) girls these days are grossly sexualized. You really need to sift through the racks to find stuff that isn't midriff exposing, designed to flaunt imaginary cleavage, or something similar. (And it just gets worse. Sally's going on seven -- her clothing size, great brute that she is, is going on eleven. By next year everyhting that fits her is going to be designed for an actual teenager -- I shudder in fear.) Which means that the parents of the girl in 102 may simply have had their judgment clouded by the pervasiveness of sexy-little-girl clothes, figuring that anything that was all over Target couldn't be too inappropriate.
113 -- I'm sure if he were your roommate you'd have beaten him into shape long since.
If I was ben's old roommate, I'd have killed and eaten him by now.
Wait a second TMK, how the hell'd you correct my 117 before it even posted? Scary.
I'm also surprised that no-one has yet pointed out that ben is obviously trying to bed his roommate's girlfriend.
I'd have... eaten him by now
ATM
93: Didn't mean to disappear upon criticism. I've always thought that the use of "that's" as a possessive was a bastardization. I'm open to being wrong, although I'll fight to the death any allegation of wrongity-wrongness (more for the Pants family's honor than for my own).
