For Bill

Hey Bill:

This bud's for you.  The contrast square with the previous ensemble, sans tie. (The tie would have worked, I was just photographing a Fendi houndstooth vest for the kids shop and the v-neck wouldn't handle the tie well)



What say you?

You Talk Too Much

It seems that in my absence due to being quite busy I garnished more views and picked up more supscribers that when I was actively posting which leads me to believe that I should just shut up :-)

Here are some new items from the Fall collection. Shirts are Hickey Freeman, Ties are FIH and are all available on (here's something new) the Men's part of the Kids Site.  The Fall Scarf Collection, (Alex Begg, Colombo and FIH Wools)  is there as well.











And in the spirit of the post name...heres a blast from the past.

RunDMC   "You Talk To Much":  Enjoy (the song...The Video is meh...)!

Still Alive

Was it Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) that had said that "The
reports of my death are greatly exaggerated"?

Same here :-). But I am working myself to the bone and spare time has been few and far between.

To prove I am alive and well... Here is a Hickey Freeman suit from the kids like, with a twill hickey freeman shirt and Vines Tie. Very elegant tie I think and brightens up the shirt (which I intentionally chose dark due to the tie)



Later in the week, new ties arriving! Dont give up on me just yet!

Got Kids?

As listed before the bulk of my day is spent either buying or selling high end kids clothing in Tuesday's Child Boutique.  The Men's stuff is an extension of that and at that a minor one at that.  Call it a hobby.  MEANWHILE, however, hobbies don't pay the rent :-)  which brings me to todays post.  Knowing that I would be spending the bulk of the day at the Armani showroom in Manhattan, and knowing that I needed to post some Hickey Freeman kids shirts online on our web site I figured to kill two birds with one stone and take the pics and use them for my post today (and probably tomorrow as well).

I will reserve comment and let the pictures do the talking.  Enjoy and have a great weekend!

(PS:  I wouldn't mind some feedback if anyone is of the mind to say hi.  I dont need it but its nice to hear.  Thanks!)

S10 Tie By Tie (Mixing it Up)

For my kids shop, I love the Hickey Freeman His First. They use great fabrics and the construction is off the adult line.  The result is a kids suit made like a mans suit with detail and attention given to all matters.  Iits not a canvassed suit but its a well made fused one.

Anyway, in search of more than the typical shirt fabric that I have on the FIH site I borrowed a Hickey Freeman's kids shirt for the next tie.  The shirt and suit had enough stripes to warrant a plain (non patterned)  silk tie.  I spiced it up a little with the square.



Here is the square detail.  Blow it up and see just how well the colors go with the navy of the suit and green of the tie.



for a different spin on the square, a red with green trimmed vintage square here:



And shown in play here:

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 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:

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 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 4b (In Practice)

Pardon the low res shot, but here is a picture sent to me by a customer/reader (Jason who commented earlier) of the darker blue shirt with the lighter colored tie.  Jason has it against the Navy jacket/suit.  I had it against the brown.  Either way.  First shot shows the floral square.



And with a contrast border white with light blue border.

Tie By Tie 4a (The Spoken Request)

Off to a Holiday party but here are some shots taken when I was in the store upon Jason's request from the previous posts comment's.

Links and commentary to follow at a later time:

EDIT: Links and comments inserted

Here is the English Twill Tie posted earlier against a French Blue shirt with the Hickey Freeman Jacket and Royal Blue Floral Square.  If you look closely you can see the blue in the jacket coming alive in with this shirt and square.


As Jason mentioned to me in an email (correctly so) the darker blue really makes the combo pop.  Not so with the Lighter blue shirt:



The lighter blue shirt with a white and blue pin dot tie and a light blue linen square.


And as per the original request the chevron tie in off white with the floral square.

The Diversion

On Sunday, reader Paul challenged me to find a match for the shirt pictured below. The issue that presents itself as was mentioned in the comments is that the shirt is its bold and wide spaced stripes lend itself to being more to casual and perhaps tieless.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="The Thrown Down Gauntlet (as in "Challenge") Shirt"][/caption]

I cannot argue the fact that the width of the stripes of the tie make the shirt better suited (no pun intended) for casual. There is really no way around that. However it doesn't need to be limited to casual and with the right suit or jacket and tie one can get this in a regular work day as well. Dont get me wrong, this will be far from conservative, but we knew that going in.

The trick here will be to break up the stripes of the shirt by keeping to a toned down tie. Anything with a pattern or design would only serve to cause the eyes to work overtime trying to make heads or tails out of the busy event that is the shirt and the tie. Not having an exact match in the shirt I used a Hickey Freeman His First wide stripe medium blue shirt from a few seasons ago that we had in the kids shop.

The flash may have made it a little more royally looking but here is what I came up with.



(Here is a high res shot, its worth a look)

The blue in the shirt picks up on the blue in the jacket. The blackish pinkish tie (not on the site but in the same family as the linked) gives a complementing color to the blazer as well as the shirt and being a solid is strong enough to garner its own attention yet soft enough to not cause sensory overload. The twill weave of the tie was icing on the cake as it added to the tie without being a pattern. The square, again the parasol in brown.

My digital photography skills didn't do this ensemble justice but when the wife walked by she exclaimed "Gorgeous!".

Thoughts?

One down, two to go

Happy Monday to you all!  Here's to a better week than the last one was.

Got a box today with one hard to work shirt and a Grey Glen Plaid suit as well as black check Sportscoat.

The history behind the shirt was that it was a gift from a business associate from overseas, and the subject was wondering if it could be worked into a business setting with a suit as said business associate would be visiting and the gift recipient wanted to show his appreciation.

The nature of the shirt made it hard as its a darkish blue color with a purplish tinge to it and almost to the point of looking a bit denimy. (that means like DENIM, DUH!)

Here is what I came up with, using a Navy pin stripe suit, and a universal color square (meaning there are so many different colors here you can almost use these squares for everything).

I think that this (its not really that tie, that tie isnt on the site, shame on me.  This is the pink/black version of that pink ) tie works best here. It gives enough color and contrast without being over the top.  Its not quite red, closer to a pinky black.  Its somewhat textured but the texture doesn't compete with the shirts chevron weave.



This also works well for the same reason.  Its got reds, Blues and violets mixed in there.



Finally, this floral/paisley which doesnt look that special in the pic but is a nice match in person.  The darker colors of the tie almost blend perfectly with the shirt. (OK, OK, my wife thought it got lost against the shirt, but what who asked HER?)



Tomorrow we attack the Glen Plaid Suit. :-)

The Brown Suit 2

Looking at the stats of this blog, the single most looked at and referred to post is the brown suit post.

The way I see it , if thats what they want then thats what they shall get :)

Here is a brown suit with a medium blue/grey stripe.  Paired with a contrast collar and cuff blue pin stripe shirt,matched with a beehive weave green and blue tie, green and Navy braces, and assorted color parasol square.

The result is in this:



Made up from these:

Been There Round Two

Here are two more looks from the same jacket as yesterday that we did in the kids shop.

In both cases the square was added after for this site (we didnt do a square for the kids, except for in one instance and then I had to pull something from a private stash since the square had to fit into a size 6 kids jacket pocket.)

Here the burgundy shirt and rust tie work with high contrast against the black of the jacket.



And here the blue of the shirt and blue textured tie pick up on the blue stripe of the jacket.  Maybe tomorrow I will show you a closeup of the jacket and how the blue shows)



In all cases the square has all the right colors to match yet have some brightness to it.

Goes with Black

Some comment over on Ask Andy prompted this series of shots.

All of the shirts are shot with a black suit and the black based version of this square:

What is interesting is that you can look at the many colors of the square that I have in the last photo and get a feel for what will go against black.  Since there are so many colors in the square with a black field its safe to say that they all blend well with black.

Didnt shoot white which is a no brainer nor did I shoot grey which as I mentioned earlier is in the black family.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="460" caption="Lavendar (Lilac)"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="460" caption="Pink"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="460" caption="Light Blue"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="460" caption="Burgundy and Blue"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="460" caption="Green Pinstripe"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="460" caption="The Square Colors Closeup"][/caption]