Tie By Tie 25 (This Just In)

Spring might not be in the air where you and I live, eat, breath and sleep but it must be really hot in the warehouses of my kids boutique suppliers because Spring merchandise is arriving daily and has been for about a month now.

Shown here is a newly arrived Hickey Freeman His First jacket from the HF Spring 10 collection, along with a Petronius Four Fold Twill Print in Rusty Orange and a cream shirt with a yellow and silver Honey Jar square.



The rust in the tie as well as the beige flower working with the cream shirt pulls out that beige windowpane in the jacket.  The silver and yellow in the square complements it all.  Here you get a better detail of the square:



Unabashed Plug here:  I have gone to some serious discounts on the cashmeres and other items on the FIH Site.  Cashmere coats, under 700 dollars, Scarves between 25-35% off.  Same with Cashmere Sweaters.  Check it out!

Tie by Tie 24b (Bluer is Better)

In Tie By Tie 24 (Two posts back) , I mentioned that the light orange tie against the pale blue shirt fell a little flat and perhaps it would look better with the darker contrast blue shirt. Here is the original very pale shirt:



And here with a darker blue pin stripe shirt.



And if you feel that with the narrow stripes I have violated Flusserian law, then try it with the darker solid blue shirt for this:



In all cases shown with the rainbow square and in both cases, certainly better than the pale blue.

Unabashed Plug here:  I have gone to some serious discounts on the cashmeres and other items on the FIH Site.  Cashmere coats, under 700 dollars, Scarves between 25-35% off.  Same with Cashmere Sweaters.  Check it out!

Every Which Way (But Loose)

Its nearly 12Am and I haven't been home for 2 hours yet.  It's been a long day.

Not having been in the store today we will have to content ourselves with the jacket (Burberry), square and shirt that I wore today which you can see below.

The beauty of a multicolored large patterned pocket squares is that one can achieve different looks depending on how its positioned in the pocket and whats visible peeking out.  In this case its less apparent as the background is a strong burgundy,  but you can get the idea.

Here the blue of the square is not visible, so the burgundy and beige of the square picks up the brown windowpane of the jacket.



Here the Slate blue of the square shows nicely highlighting the blue nature of the jacket.



Here is your square detail.  My unbiased opinion?   Magnificent!



PS:  For you old timers that recognize the title of the post, it was Clint Eastwood's "Every Which way but Loose" inspired.  As kids we had a great kick out of 12 Rib's My... and Right Turn Clyde! (Mom didn't enjoy it as much as we did!)

Tie By Tie 24b (The Long and Winding Road)

On that long and winding road from upstate the missus and your's truly have come to the unpleasant conclusion that just because 5 of your kids travel well without Dramamine doesn't mean that the 6th will...

:-(

One for the road, or better yet, from the road. I hope it doesnt do to you what the road did to her ;-) !

PS: Here as in the past I am not at all bothered by the closeness in size of the two different patterns that the shirt and tie are, see here for additional discussions on the topic.




Note that the darker blue shirt gives the pale pink tie more "oomph" in the ensemble vs this combo with the paler blue shirt as seen here:

Tie By Tie 24 (More Twills)

Greetings and a happy work week to all.

Sorry for the quiet weekend.   Friday was a short and rushed day and Sunday the missus dragged me along with her to our yearly before I go to Italy/Mid winter upstate getaway with the kids for a few days.  The true pleasures in life, watching your kids really enjoy themselves :-)

Anyway, I snapped a few shots before the weekend though along the lines of the previous post i.e. Twills:

Here is what we have:

The shirt is Light Blue, The suit is Navy, The square is multicolor with all the right colors therein.  The tie is Orange.  Normally Orange is a gret meatch with all sorts of blues.  Here I wasnt crazy about it.  Not sure why other than the fact that it just didnt do anything for me perhaps. Would probably work better with a darker blue shirt for better contrast. (I will try that when I get back to the store).



Square detail here:



Better was the pink version of the same tie shown below:



Broken up here:



A very successful week to all!

Tie By Tie 23 (Going where others can't)

Woven silks are nice but for colors and designs, its difficult for a weave to go where twill prints go. Thats why you will find many designers using twills to get their designs from the mind onto the silks. (For more on woven silks vs printed see this post)

Here are some of the twills prints I carry, starting with a navy double stripe suit, light blue shirt , burgundy floral square and the navy blue small diamond print:



The square looks quite busy out of the pocket which is one of the reasons that I as well as others recommend you stick it into the pocket ;-)



I happen to have worn that square to a meeting with a supplier today which was pretty much a total waste of time.  One day closer to the weekend though :-).

Cheers!

Tie By Tie 22b (Light Blue Quickie)

After a long day on the road today I am just gonna post a quickie regarding additional interview gear that I mentioned in the previous post.

Colors as you know and feel yourself can have a significant effect on mood. A beautiful looking flower or item will melt hearts and can change even the most foul of moods and feelings.  Its why we buy them for the SO (significant other) and when visiting the sick.  Soft and pleasing colors, cheer people up.

Thats one of the reasons that the light blue tie (in this case a solid) while being less sedate than the navy tie against navy suit is an acceptable color when interviewing. Think "clear blue skies" and the happiness and calm feelings that the color blue connotes and how it presents in people's minds. The connotation is a pleasant one.



Tomorrow, some twills.

Tie By Tie 22 (More Interviews)

Another long day writing Burberry for the Kids shop for Fall 2010. A promised though here are some more ideas for interviews, more in the stripe department.    As before I left them primarily with navy until the last option which is a slight variation off the navy theme (its navy with burgundy as well.)  Many will tell you that burgundy is a color that can comfortably be worn on interviews and they are probably right, but I would stay away from a strong burgundy that is close to red.  Not because red indicates power or red is a challenging color or an eye attracting color (which it is and you do want them to concentrate on you not your tie) but mostly because out of all the applicants will NOT be wearing red and therefore you should not be wearing red either. :-)

A Boring Stripe/Check in Navy.



A boring small chevron weave:



A boring squares pattern in burgundy and navy.  The navy tones the burgundy down (or the burgundy livens the navy, depending on if your glass is half empty or half full :-) ).



As we are talking about interviews, here is some unsolicited advice.  In a small business one wears many hats and HR is one of my many.  Having read through literally thousands of resumes here are some things that have always either piqued my interest or turned me off.

1) As your resume if your first foot forward and allows your prospective employer to learn about you, PLEASE use spell check to make sure you spelled things correctly. If you are using word or most web browsers, those squiggly red lines under the word means you spelled it wrong :-).

2) Even after you have ascertained that everything is spelled correctly give your resume over to a friend or a professional to proofread so you can get a feel for how it flows and if it makes sense.  It may make sense to you but thats because you know what its supposed to say.

3) The email address you send the resume from or the email address that is on your resume should not be one that you use in a chat room or just hanging with your cronies.  You are interviewing for a job, not trying to get picked up or pick someone else up (I hope).  I cannot tell you how many silly email addresses I have seen resume's come from or containing silly reply to addresses.  Get a gmail, yahoo or hotmail account that has your name in it and nothing else.   Emails that come into my HR box from HOTYOUNGSTUD@AOL.com or the female version thereof, usually get deleted immediately, and for those that dont delete it you are usually stepping up to bat with a reviewer who already has a jaundiced eye of you due to your bad judgement call of email addresses.

4) Many resume builder services tell you to have a paragraph entitled Objective where ostensibly the applicant is supposed to tell you what he wants to gain from the job or his/her career.  I have no idea who made this up but if you ask me its "silly" (I am being nice here).   First of all, everyone does the boilerplate response, "To seek meaningful employment, blah blah blah" .  That means to your employer that you just filled in what you were supposed to.  Secondly,  Your prospective employer doesn't really care at this point how you want to advance your career.  He cares what you can do for him.  Sort of the Ask not what your country can do for you...Ask what you can do for your country.

Here is my suggestion.  Instead of a line about how this job can help you, why dont you put in a summary line of what you can do to help the boss achieve HIS goals, and why he should hire you.  A line to the effect of  "I can bring to the table quality A, B and C to help company XYZ get to JKL."   That shows your employer that you are looking to help him in his goals.  How can anyone ignore that?

5) Arrive to the interview on time.  Nay, better yet early.  Dont make them wait for you.  Leave early enough to get there in time.  Better you wait for them a half hour then they wait for you 5 or 10 minutes.  If you absolutely HAVE to be late, communicate with a phone call (dont leave a voice mail, make sure you get in touch with them) and not only an email (Not all HR personal are attached to their PC at all times) . They are making time for you, be considerate of that time.

6) Make sure your clothing is above all else, CLEAN.  ESPECIALLY your shoes.

7) After the interview follow up with an email thanking them for the opportunity, telling them again that you look forward to putting your skills to work for them and letting them know that if they have any questions you are available to answer vie email and or phone.

Good luck!

Tie By Tie 21 (Interviews)

With the navy suit, white shirt out I though it timely to talk a little about interview wear.

In an interview, I think that you are best off blending in and erring on the side of mediocrity (with regard to your garb that is) rather than standing out and making a statement.  Here is the time for your interviewer to be focused on what you have said and can do rather than what your clothing say.

That being the case, keep it nice and boring (please do not confuse ugly with boring).  Unless you know they all wear pocket squares then skip the square.  Even if they do wear squares then stay with white or light blue.  Thats why I shot the pics with a white linen square.  Additionally, a white shirt is an easy and safe way to go but you might be able to pull off a light (LIGHT, NOT DARK!!!!) blue shirt.

Here are three options in patterns that I believe are not too busy for an interview.

Square framed circles tie:



Interlocking circles pattern tie:



Soft Pin Dot Twill Tie:



Tomorrow I will show some stripes and another pattern veering slightly (thats the buzz word) away from blue.

Tie By Tie 20 (Almost Weekend Edition)

Busy and short day starting off with hand delivering a special order scarf to a customer, taking a boat load of pictures that needed to be retaken and getting ready for the weekend.

On the topic of that orange square, I think that the best way to deal with a square that bright a color is to have little else to do with that color in the ensemble.

Here are three options all against a white shirt and navy suit.  A white based striped shirt would work also.

This polka dot has a slight orange-ish polka dot in the pattern:



Here a darker paisley thick weave.



Here a satin based small floral pattern.



Have a great weekend all!

Tie By Tie 19 (The "Well Read" Man)

Being born and bred into the clothing business I can probably name more colors by name than your typical man. Even so, there was no chance in France that I was prepared for the name that this great site's color wheel generated for the color of the stripe of this tie, which was Well Read (AA2E36 garnished from the color dropper in Photoshop).  I again left the orange square thinking that it might work well with the jacket but these recent two ties move it out of place labeling it as way too bright with this ensemble.



Instead I used the second square from yesterday.  More toned down and with so many complementary colors it blended in perfectly with the ensemble.



Here is the square detail.  Note the blue highlight and how it matches the blue in the tie almost perfectly.

Tie By Tie 18 (Your Omega-3 Source)

Had a long day today so the text part of todays post is gonna be quick and I will let the pictures do the talking.  This might be the theme going forward as the buying season kicks in for Tuesday's Child.   Tomorrow in fact we head out to write Diesel but I have part two of tonights scheduled for tomorrow so expect something from me tomorrow night as well.   Incidentally, Omega-3's BTW are a healthy fatty acid found in salmon the color of which was the idea behind the post, and while salmon colored ties don't do much in the way of improving your health, they do happen to look nice.  (you can read more about the important health benefits of Omega-3 here.).

The Jacket is a Hickey Freeman His First, shown with a light blue shirt, salmon colored tie and orange square.



With the square detailing here:



I thought that the orange of the square while working well with the jacket in and of itself  was too closely matched to the square.  Instead I took this which worked with the jacket and had some orange highlights.  Tomorrow's post will have the square detail and I should probably add it to the site one of these days so people can actually BUY them.  Duh... :-(



Come to think of it, I didn't do too bad with regard to the text here. Imagine if I wouldnt have been tired...

:-)

Tie By Tie 17 (More of the Littles)

Continuing along with some more small patterns and small spaced pin stripe shirts I show a brown suit, burgundy pin striped shirt (both suit and shirt from the His First Hickey Freeman line) and a turquoise/teal patterned tie with the flower pot multi colored square.    This particular colored tie clashed with the blue pin stripe shirt so I used the burgundy.  Incidentally you can swap the brown suit used here for a navy suit and it will look fine as well.



With a detail of the square here.



Against the more calming and sedate shirt the effect is so:



What did work with the blue shirt was the rust colored tie in the same mini floral pattern shown here:

Clarity

For the sake of clarity with regard to yesterday's post please allow me elaborate. There is no question that Mr. Flusser is correct conceptually that when one pattern jockeys for position with another pattern the potential for compromise as opposed to victory exists.  What I mean by that is that instead of a shirt or a suit creating a background for the tie to be noticed the possibility of the two blending together is strong.  There are however a few ways for the patterns to get noticed.  One of course is to change the sizes of the patterns so that they are distinct in and of their own right and dont blend into each other.  This is what Flusser recommends and its correct.  So of course, this:



Looks better than this small patterned tie (which IMO looks OK, even if not as sharp as the larger patterned tie):



And this with its contrast against the cream shirt of course is easiest as it doesnt involve mixing of patterns.



Which is comprised of this:



My main complaint was the fact that while the concept may have been true, the picture that Mr. Flusser used to elucidate that point was exaggerated, almost as if to show that the eye cannot ever tolerate similarly sized patterns without glazing over.  Assuming that would be correct then the lesson is better taught with a clear picture rather than a blurry one.  Mr. Flusser uses a blurry picture to complete a thought while attempting to bolster his position I personally feel he weakens it.

But thats just my opinion and I haven't yet sold any books ;-)

Weekend Edition (My Beef with Flusser)

Friday I posted a picture of an Attolini teal blue small patterned unlined tie paired with a small striped Hickey Freeman Shirt and a green jacket.  This was the picture:



Flusserian pundits will recall that on Page 70 of Dressing the man, (a very excellent book,) Alan Flusser maintains that small prints or patterns demand larger patterns to correctly complement them, otherwise the small against the small forces the eye to work overtime to distinguish between where the tie ends and the shirt or second patterned item begins.  He then accompanies that theory with the following picture to be found on page 71:



Indeed at first glance, this does seem to bolster the thought that smaller patterns might force the eye into a tizzy and almost create a blur between the two competing patterns trying to figure out where each ends and begins.

But if you take a closer look at the picture here and better yet in the book itself, (If you have the book flip it open to page 71, if you don't have the book you can rely on my picture posted here) you might want to question the following:

There is no doubt in my mind that the top picture on page 71 was for whatever reason BLURRY to begin with, and the bottom ensemble is quite clear. So while the concept might sometimes be true the visual proof that is utilized to hammer home that point is somewhat suspect. Does it mean that Flusser as a whole is off the mark? Certainly not, and as I mentioned the book is great. However it does tell you (or at least me) that this Flusserian principal must be taken with a grain of salt. To that end I offer up my grain of salt in the form of my picture from Friday.

A very good weekend/workweek to all.

Tie By Tie 16 (Almost Weekend Edition)

This feller is gonna have to be edited later to provide links, and reasoning.   I meanwhile wanted to get the pics up and running. Feel Free to comment before I do! Have a great weekend all!

EDITED FOR LINKS AND COMMENT:

Here is the same jacket from yesterday in Olive/Green with a blue pin stripe shirt (also a Hickey Freeman His First) shown together with a Navy Polka Dot tie, and accompanied by a Navy and Red floral Square:  The idea here was that the navy would work with the green jacket especially when the jacket was broken up by the shirt.



Here is your closeup of the colors of the square.



To add a little diversity in the color  and to bring the shirt closer to the red in the square I swapped the blue stripped HF for a Red Striped with this look:



Back to the Blue striped shirt with an unlined Attolini print.  The tie is almost a teal like blue which works nicely into the jacket, as it blends the colors of the jacket and the shirt together.

Tie By Tie 15 (The Green Lantern)

Here is a dark pea green tweed Hickey Freeman His First jacket that we did in the kids shop which was  rather nice but not your run of the mill.  Green works well with blues of all sorts as I have illustrated in the past, so I chose a Hickey Freeman Blue narrow striped shirt.  Rounded out with the brown and blue floral patterned tie and a multicolored flowerpot square.   As the sportscoat is pretty much patternless, I was comfortable using more busy accouterments in the way of a striped shirt and patterned tie and square.  Your result is this: (I'll venture out of the realm of this blog by suggesting a chocolate brown flannel pant to complete the ensemble).  (And for outerwear you are safe with a camel or caramel colored coat, like this one. and any of many scarves from my site.)



With a square detail here (get a load of the vibrancy of those colors!):



While the colors "match" here, I thought that this tie, not having enough contrast fell flat against the green of the jacket and blue of the shirt.  Additionally while the dominant stripes of the tie are wider spaced, when you blow it up the underlying stripes are too closely matched in size, causing the stripes in the tie to conflict with the stripes in the shirt. (see Alan Flusser in "Dressing the Man" for more on this)

Tie By Tie 14 (4 at one Blow)

Like Mickey, the hero in Disney's Brave Little Tailor (Video Link Below) , I easily could have done 7 ties at one blow, or rather with this one background of the brown suit/blue shirt, Large painted paisley square that was out from yesterday but I figured that four would suffice.

Here you have "4 at one blow"! (and call me a dolt but I just figured out that I could size pics for regular viewing and have those same pics clickable to reveal the high res., so feel free to click on any picture you like to get the real up close and personal story :-)

Lead off is a a no brainer tie,   Brown with blue warp and stripes.



A little more daring, orange, slate blue, tans and light browns.  All work nicely with the brown suit and blue shirt.



This, an orange and blue paisley is one of those ties that has a blue warp so depending on how you hold it is what you see.  In general,  Blue + Brown + Light Orange = Nice.



Finally, a navy satin field with blue and brown and Burgundy stripes.



And as promised, here is the Disney Classic: