3 Ways to Wear a Tie
The etiquette of tie-wearing is as complicated as a Windsor knot – if style can give moral direction (© Martin Amis), then the angle at which your neckwear dangles is a right old ethical tangle. Think about it: what is a tie if not a halfway house between a noose and an arrow pointing at your penis? With the possible exception of the man-clutch, there is no accessory more fundamentally weird. This, of course, is precisely what makes wearing one so enjoyable.
But there are rules; tie it too thick (the infamous ‘Rooney’ knot) and you look like a small town loan shark at a cousin’s wedding; too thin and you risk being mistaken for the drummer in Pete Doherty’s support band circa 2005. There is no such thing as an inconspicuous tie – however you string it up, it’s going to say something about you. To help you avoid it screaming ‘prissy’, ‘boring’ or indeed ‘unhinged’, we’ve picked four gents from the past who really mastered the art of collar decoration…
ALBERT CAMUS
Sacré Bleue! Just look at that knot – its borderline anal neatness perfectly offsets the elegant sloppiness of the rest of the Nobel-winning author’s get-up – let’s call it ‘hangover chic’.
JAMES STEWART
Try looking at this picture and imagining the star of Vertigo open-shirted – doesn’t quite work, does it? Stewart’s knot is so perfect it’s almost impossible – bonus points for the evil-eye pattern on the black silk, too.
MILES DAVIS & HOWARD McGHEE
Okay, so including two in one is cheating a bit – but we saw this photo of the two great Jazz trumpeters and were struck with cravate-envy. Miles, on the left, has a pretty natty number – but the real winner here is McGhee – look how Davis stares up at him! His open collar and louche, loose knot really shouldn’t work, but somehow he makes it look clean, graceful and very, very, very cool.
By Digby Warde-Aldam
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