Greetings from London's Heathrow Airport

On the road today and as I mentoned earlier this week and the next will be spotty.  But dont give up on me, in the words of Ahhhnold.



I'll be back!

:-)

The trustworthy pindot

I have promised much (about editing the posts to explain my pictures) yet I have not delivered.  True dat, but its not for lack of interest rather for lack of time as I have been busy.  My season is starting very soon where we both buy for the kids shop and begin our selling campaign for the Fall 09 season.  Additionally we have lots of change taking place in our brick and mortar location by way of a management change (not ownership, but store manager) so thats taken the forefront.  Finally, I am taking a few days off before all heck breaks loose by way of the above, so I will be offline for the next few days (but always checking in of course and attempting to edit my past posts from the iphone) so I leave you with the following two pics which illustrate the point.

Pindots are classic, useful and rarely fail.  They provide life to a solid color tie without challenging the senses and risking rejection.

If you dont own a pin dotted tie go out and buy one as soon as you can as it should be a staple in every wardrobe.

Here we show how a pindotted tie adds life without being obnoxious.  The next few posts will be devoted to that. (But not before Thursday-Friday.)

Enjoy your week!

Stripes Galore

Much has been said about if one can put stripes (Tie) with stripes (Shirt)  and even with more stripes (suit).

In my opinion (well, Duh,  it IS my blog you know) its like everything in life.  It depends.

What you basically want to avoid is where the stripes all blend together to create what appears to be the optical illusion.   I will post a few photosd now as I am running out but the discussion will follow.

Feel free to contribute some thoughts before I get the chance.  But before you go all screaming understand that these phots are some yes's and some no's.

EDIT:  This next set works.  Stripes are different sizes and the blending of shirt suit and tie is avoided.




EDIT:  I think that this pushes the limits.  There are too many stripes in the shirt and tie so even if they arent the same size they are closely sized and when you look at the ensemble you see STRIPES! This is further exacerbated by the fact that the colors are the same (all Navy's)  Look at the next pic and its better in the red.  Better, but still not there.



EDIT:  Definately works IMO.  yes stripes but similar to the first, where the stripes dont blend together.



EDIT:  Too many similarly spaced stripes.  Made worse by the additional tones of blue.


EDIT:  Works, DESPITE the similarly spaced stripes due to the extreme contrast that the tie has against the shirt.

Comments on Comments

Last week in Thursday's post, Onix commented the following:

"At the first try, the square has yellow and blue, thus seems to work. However, the texture of the jacket is a bit rough looking, so the second try with orange and navy in rougher material really made it."

Lets look at that comment for a bit.  Its true that the colors of the square work in coordination with the colors of the jacket and its also true that the second square is a "better" match, but is it the texture that throws it off or is it something else.  Personally ,  I think that its not the texture, rather the visible proportions of the square to the jacket as well as the bold color of the yellow that does it.

Let us not forget that the  square was meant to break the expanse amount of fabric of the chest by giving a visual break the that area.  The question that remains is how much of a break do you want and should it detract from the tie.  Inasmuch as the blackish square against the black jacket goes unnoticed, the stark yellow of the square on the blue goes perhaps too noticed.  Consider the following photos.

In Photos 1 and 2 We show that the colors work well with the jacket as far as "matching"




In the third photo when we pair the thus far incomplete ensemble with a light blue shirt and orange Attolini Tie, we see that your eye is not sure where to go being drawn to the square, back to the tie, and back to the square. (and tie again).


The same when we bring in the brown tie, which works with the shirt and jacket yet fights for attention with the  square again.

Similarly with the beige tie.



Now, to rectify the fighting for attention troubles we can do a few things.  We can either tuck the square a little more into the pocket making it less visible so it goes from the picture above, to the picture below. There. That looks better cause you break the jacket without going for broke.


Or we can swap out the square for a softer detailed square.  Certainly it adds color but it doesnt take that much away from the tie and your look is here.



Which is made up of this.



Which one is better?  Its just a matter of tastes or perhaps moods :-)

No time to link the items...Off to my daughters graduation from 8th grade.  Wasnt she just going to playgroup yesterday?  Sigh...

Upon Further Reflection (Request 1 Addendum)

I mentioned yesterday that I would break away from the light blue or white shirt and go where I thought this jacket needed to be taken. (And I have to clean the post up a bit but meanwhile you have food for thought till I get back)

Just to finish off yesterday's light blue shirt coloration with some more orange and beige, here are two more options tht I think look really nice with the jacket.  The more I see with this jacket the more that I think that soft orange or brown is the way to go. Different enough to not be cookie cutter but not too much.



and the orange paisley version of the burgundy paisley. What makes these paisleys so nice is that you almost get two ties in one, the warp color and the weft.



Here are some more shots of burgundy but this time with a grey twill as well as a beige and orange theme / gray shirt,

The Burgundy color of the tie works here as does the texture (wooly.)  You may disagree with the beige stripes of the tie, claiming that they come too close to the beige and burgundy of the jacket.  I wont argue with you.



In this version with the repositioning of the square that its more of a gray square than a perfect match to the Burgundy/Blue paisley.



The burgundy pindot tie again with the grey shirt as a backdrop.  (incidentally, Suit Owner you called this squares.  I dont see it as squares, rather as a pin dot where the weave frames in a square.)



and finally the "Red Bull" shirt that I think was created to jump start life into the greyish nature of the jacket.  You have to admit, the shirt being a mix of burgundy  and blue does add some zing and works well with the jacket!  I think that the first combination is great.  The tie has pinks, plums, black and navy mixed in.  ALL those colorse work in tandem with whatever color you want to call the jacket, be it greyish or navy (which is not, no matter what the salesman told you sir!)





With Brown you get a nice touch as it pics up the beigeish outline of the red windowpane (which is what makes the windowpane not a true red)



And finally some more small stripes with Orange, Blue, Brown and more.  It might be a bit busy but otherwise,  whats not to like?

Upon Request

As I mentioned in the past,  I do take requests.  You are free to email me a link to an Item you would like to see matched up and I can try and find a comparable or better yet if you are local you can drop it off and I will work it up for you.

Utilizing the latter offer, a customer dropped off a Brioni Jacket (part of a suit) that you see below.  Its was a hard  jacket to work with for two reasons.  1) The pronounced windowpane, which was making it hard for the customer. and 2) The actual color which was a grayish blue.  I certainly wouldnt have classifies it as a true navy which would have made it easier to work with.

I was somewhat limited by the shirt color which was to be  white or blue.  Given free reign I would have chosen a shade of grey (And thats tomorrow's photo essay) but alas, word came down from on high (the customer) that he is not a fan of gray shirts.

So here goes:

The color of the jacket lends itself to anything that works with grey/blue, and along with the reddish brownish windowpane check.  You can get a high res to see the colors of the jacket here.

Here in the first shot I paired it with a soft light blue shirt (not on the site), and an orange brown cashmere tie.  The Fabric of the jacket allows for the cashmere tie and the  colors are all right.  The orange tie works with the steely blue as well as with the windowpane which is reddish burgundy.   The square is an orangish brown as well (but not the same color as the tie) which livens the jacket just a bit.  The grey circles in the square only work to enhance the blending together with the jacket.




Due to the burgundy/reddish windowpane in the jacket, its only natural to introduce burgundy into the tie mix (if you own one tie this should be the one) which is what I did with the following results:

(notice that I kept the pattern of the square but substituted the orange for the grey version of it which also has burgundy highlights around the circle.)



Mixing in a blue and burgundy paisley pattern just goes to show that you arent limited to squares and neets patterns in the tie.  Here a uniformly patterened paisley works well with the tie.  I think you might run into trouble with larger and more abstract paisleys, as the size of the pattern will compete with the windowpane.


Now back to a Petronius orange in a neets with a different square which has the orange black blue and another 6 colors to make sure that somehow we match :-).  I like the orange look with this jacket.




Finally, just to prove that we can also do stripes here, I brought back an orangey Brown striped tie that has some blue in it to get this result.  The square looks very busy but of course you will only get a small portion of that visible and then you get the result two pics down.



In this last shot I had paired the tie with a square that looked ok  in real life but bad on the screen so I eliminated the square from the photo (Cropped to the left rather than to the right).  I guess I left the tie since it was there already.  It works.

A long week

I dunno about you readers, but its been a really long yet somehow at the same time lightening fast week.

Next week we will talk about Onix's comments (incidentally, Onix doesnt have a special license to post, he just opts to post and I welcome more of you to do the same) and I have one request from a reader (who will be bringing me his suit jacket to work with so we should be busy.  Also I will be posting close to 100 new ties from Attolini and Petronius (the petronius are already online) plus some new Sterling Silver accessories, in time for Father's day so we will be busy.

I leave you for the weekend with a joke.

"Judy had been slipping in and out of a coma for several months.
Yet Tony, her husband, had stayed by her bedside every single day. One day, when Judy came to, she motioned for Tony to come nearer. As he sat by her, she whispered, eyes full of tears,
"You know what? You have been with me all through the bad times...
When I got fired from my secretary’s job, you were there to support me.
When my first hairdressing business failed, you were there.
When I got knocked down by a car, you were by my side.
When we lost our dear Micheal, you stayed right here.
When my health started failing, you were still by my side...
You know what?"
"What dear?" Tony gently asked, smiling as his heart began to fill with warmth.

"I think you bring me bad luck."

:)

Enjoy the weekend.

Squares: Your Jacket's Window

Imagine if you will a house without windows.  Aside from the obvious practical implications it would have, it would also be aesthetically not pleasing to the eye.  Something like this.



Throw in windows and suddenly it look like this:



This is pretty much the same theory (at least as far as I can tell) to wearing a square.  (Please do not use any square on your nose)

A square takes that expanse piece of fabric known as the chest of your blazer or suit jacket makes it go from this:



To this:



From this:



To this:



Or better yet this:



This:


To this:


This:


To this:

Or


You get the idea (Or shall I add some lighter colors and illustrate more?)
But one thing you have to bear in mind is that if the point here is to add a visual addition to the breast, then you want to go from this:



To this:



But you don't want to do something like this:



Because...Well, I can hardly see it either. :)