Flash Forward

Greetings all with wishes for a Happy Memorial Day to all and a special thanks to all those that have or are still serving in the Military. G-d bless and protect!

Using the same sports jacket from last week (yeah, it was still on the floor and ready to go, oops.) I switched the ecru shirt for a light blue shirt and decided that while a navy tie would work well, I wanted to go with brown to lead back to the olives and navy in the jacket. For the square I went back to the ecru linen square for toning down purposes.

Here are the results:

(Brown Pin Dot Tie, Ecru Square, Blue Shirt):



Brown Satin Tie with yellow dots.  I like how the brown works with the greens and navy in the jacket and the dots  in the tie work back to the square.



And back to a little vibrancy with the blue shirt here is a vintage print that never made it onto the site but may already be spoken for, shown with the navy floral square:



Have a great and successful week!

Flash Back

In yesterday's post I referenced how I had worked the small check olive sportscoat from Hickey Freeman.

Here is pretty much what I had done, shown with the ecru twill shirt and Navy and Green Tie.  I kept the floral square in the first shot:



Liking the navy introduction I swapped the earthy tones of the square for a navy and green vintage square



Which comes together looking like this:



And here it all is when you swap the green tie for a predominantly navy polka dot tie.



Have a great weekend all!

In a Flash

On my way out of the store today it dawned on me that I hadn't taken any pictures for tonights post. Having had a long day I wasn't in that much of a mood to work that hard at it, so I pretty much pulled what was within arms length of me in the office where I photograph the items.

This is what I came up with. Not too shabby if I say so myself!

Whats interesting here is that in the past I had worked this jacket with a blue shirt and a navy and green tie. Here I used the brown pin stripe shirt to pick off the olive nature of the jacket (a hickey freeman his first sportscoat, and the solid green tie, along with the earthy toned version of the floral vintage square.



With the square detail shown here:

Bronze Wedding; Take 2

Using the pictures that were posted in the comments last night (shown below) I suggested the following:

For the sari that will be worn at the day wedding (note the greens and plums with bronze and gold trimmings):



I suggested the bronze tie and green paisley square shown below.  If you examine the colors in the sari and the tie I think that no explanation is necessary as to why it works well.





Here is the reception dress fabric. I felt as mentioned in the comments that the pinkish coloration in the polka dots called for this tie in gold satin with pink and a soft color pink or white with pink linen square.







Or with the pink trimmed white square.



Damn, I am good! :-)

A Nice Day for a Bronze Wedding (From the Mailbag)

Well, the song goes a nice day for a white wedding but still...

Here is a request from a phone call that on my say so became a written request.

"On May 25, 2010 at 11:37 am Sachin Said:

Hello,

I am attending a wedding this weekend and need to pair two suits to match with what my fiance has planned. For the actual wedding I have a dark charcoal suit to be matched to a pink, green/gold sari. The evening reception is a black suit to be matched to a black with bronze metallic highlighted sari.

What would go best with these combos? Please help!

"

This weekend, eh?  Nothing like the last minute I always say :-).

In the phone call there was no mention of the pink, green and gold sari so I didnt concentrate on it, choosing rather to concentrate on the Black with bronze.  Luckily I happened to have taken a shot in the bronze theme that will probably work perfectly, having a pale bronze, green AND pink.

For the square I used an orange one from the new collection for a little color but of course a nice white will do quite nicely, and of course as its a wedding a white shirt is in place.



The rest are for the Black Suit with bronze Dress.  Although the suit shown is charcoal, black will work here as well however offering greater contrast.  Incidentally, bronze is a hard color with multiple shades and I don't really know what color bronze we are referring but regardless, these will probably work.











With the second recent request I will be dedicating a page for requests.

Loosies

I hope your weekend was wonderful!

Here are some loosies that were taken yesterday, as I was away from the store all day today. By loosies I mean ties that I didnt get in quantities but instead got as a closeout from a supplier alot of different styles but only a few or in some cases one per style. I still am not sure why I buy them as they arent worth the effort, but here we are.

Shown here with a striped suit and striped shirt Both from the Hickey Freeman His First (and here the stripes may be overdone as the purple dominant stripes in the shirt downplay the light blue stripe and the resultant effect is similarly spaced stripes between the suit and the shirt, a no no in many cases) and a white linen square with purple trim.



Switched the tie for the burgundy version as so:



And here with the patterned four fold which also serves to tone down the stripes.



Have a great week!

Trust

Hey. If we are gonna do this then there has to be an element of trust, and when I tell you that silver works well with black and navy believe me.

But I know that you didn't trust me so I took pics anyway. :-)

Here you have the silver tie with a Pin Stripe suit in Navy, and a Hickey Freeman His First Shirt in Blue and Grey Check.  The Square I used was a light blue linen as I felt that that ensemble was otherwise busy enough.



The Black Suit below and the silver Satin Tie against the soft blue makes this ensemble an elegant one which is why I used the white linen square.



And of course the elegance level is raised a notch or two when you introduce the white shirt.



I will be off for two days for religious observance.  Cheers!

The Unlikely Combo (A/K/A Outside the Box)

I may have mentioned this before but I find the following story humorous and revealing as to the nature of how people think when it comes to putting looks together.  A few years back my wife and I went store browsing for my birthday.  Not to buy of course, but simply to look at how the "upper end" department stores put it all together.

Our first stop was at the Men's Department of Saks Fifth Avenue, where we chanced upon a mannequin that was totally mismatched.  The shirt and tie was right but they didnt belong with the suit. Off to the side there was what I had perceived to be the perfect accessories, a complementary shirt and tie.  The store manager was standing there and I asked him why the merchandising department  would do something like that when there were so many beautiful ties and shirts that would work so well with the particular suit, to which he responded "What you are suggesting is a "no brainer".  Anyone can do stuff like that.  Here they were thinking outside the box".  My response was that thinking outside the box is nice so long as you are still on the planet.  In this case it simply did not work.  He took a look at the suit in question and remarked...yes, you are right, what probably happened was that the previous suit worked with that shirt and tie and the merchandiser got lazy and left the shirt and tie  on while changing the suit!

My job and goal here is to get you to think a little outside the box and with that lets take a look at tonights pictures. (in which I sneak another escapee in without drawing too much attention.  How I missed these ties is beyond me.  Oops.)

Silver works naturally with Black and with Navy, so putting a silver tie with a white or blue shirt and a black or blue suit is what Mr. Saks Fifth Ave might call a no brainer.  Lets think a little outside the box and try brown.  (If you have been reading me for a bit you will know that its not that far outside the box, as Brown and Charcoal work well together.  Silver being a different shade of grey should work as well. )

Here you have the Brown suit with a Brown pin stripe Shirt (from the Kids Hickey Freeman Kids Line) paired with a silver satin tone on tone dotted tie and a floral earth tones square.



Now if you look at the square detail which is pretty of its own right you will see that the inspiration for colors can come right off the square.  You have Browns, Blacks, Beige's, Green and you guessed it...Silver.



Alternatively you can use a more monochromatic square as so:





Personally, I would go with the first.

Escapees in Brown

As mentioned yesterday and earlier as well, we can use a pink tie for both navy and brown suits. (Black and gray as well but thats not the subject of our discussion just now.)

As promised, here is the same pink tie with a brown suit. I could have left the blue shirt but felt it worked better with the ecru (cream).

For the the square you can use an earthy toned one like this floral print.



Shown in play here:



Or you can swap for a more visually rich one, like the parasol in brown shown below.



Have a great weekend!

S10 Tie By Tie (Yet More Escapees)

Yesterday was nauseating for me. I spent the day in the city for the first buying appointment for the Spring 2011 season. Heck, its just May of 2010. Leave me alone! Anyway, thats why you didnt hear from me yesterday.

Today though I was cleaning looking for a tie for a customer in the boxes or Spring 10 when I chanced upon a tie from the Spring season that I seem to have missed. Fascinating!

This Rose pink Tie is what I believe the last of the Spring 10 Collection.  I have it paired here with a blue suit and shirt, and rose pink linen square.  Blue and pinks go well together even when the pink is this shade which is sometimes called rose, or shell pink.  Its not a pure pink but rather an orangey/peach pink.



If you are looking for a little more variety in the square then move away from the linen and into a silk like this one, which has feint brown/burgundy notations.



While I maintain that pinks go well with blues, care must be taken to not mix colors of pink with each other.  This concept is generally true of many colors.  Here to my eye, the pinks clash and care should be taken to avoid placing them together.





Tomorrow we will take a look at the tie with a brown suit which works equally well.

Too Close

Sometimes the colors of your ensemble will work so well together that you will look at them and say, no, its just too close.

Take for example the pink twill tie and square below.  The colors (but for the navy in the square) are so right that even though its not a matching square, it looks too much alike.





In that case, you may want to switch it for other complementary colors as found in this sqare:





Which will add a different dimension to your look which essentially is what you want from the square.

Or for the toned down type try something like this white linen with contrast border:

From the Mailbag

Occasionally we get requests from passers by.  Here is a recent comment posted on the about me page.

"Hello,

I am getting married soon. I looked at your website and specially the pictures and thought you might be the best person to answer this. Its a pretty useful website. Great job man!

So my fiancee has already bought a dress which is pink along those lines (http://seoulcurry.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/colorpink.jpg). I am wearing a charcoal suit and trying to match up with her on this color. I know a white shirt with a pink tie would be perfect, but I don't want to wear a white shirt (as much as possible). Here are my preferences:
1) I love bright ties.
2) I don't want to mix match a lot of colors. Fewer the colors the better.
3) I want to be very careful with the pink.

Could you recommend me a few combinations of shirts, ties and pocket squares?

Thanks in advance,
ADG

Being that the Pink is a fuchsia and any tie that is closely related to it would be really bright I thought to introduce ties and squares that were of the same tones (pinks and burgundies and the colors in between.)

Here are some things that came to mind (it has been a long day so I will reserve comment and links for the AM):