Category: Ties

Bigi is in many ways what Drake's used to be before the expansion of its retail and collection: a small brand and a top-line tie manufacturer making for the world's top stores. A third generation company, it has a works...

Talking with Kenji Kaga of Sevenfold (and Tie Your Tie) recently threw up some interesting questions around what makes a tie appear vintage. Kenji is heavily influenced by 1940s-1950s styles, as is evident in his tailor...

1 R. Culturi There are many brands launching ties or handkerchiefs online these days, given it’s an easy area to try and express something new - and the lack of sizing makes it relatively easy to sell online. One ...

I know I've written about green and pink a few times before. I could find one old post with a little flower illustration, but there must be more. Perhaps it's the fog of Christmas food and wine clouding my mind. In any...

The next in our regular installment of small brands doing interesting things looks at some ties, handkerchiefs and knitwear. Viola Milano x Alexander Kraft First up is a collaboration between Alexander Kraft and online ...

I was quite intrigued to see Ethan Newton’s Bryceland's store in Tokyo when we visited a few weeks ago. In particular, how he is presenting his view on tailoring and how that mixes with the more casual americana s...

The Italian Background: an awkward but persistently useful phrase I coined back in 2008 to describe the tendency of Italians to wear blue shirts and navy ties under strongly coloured suits. Rather than the English alter...

One of the central themes of Permanent Style over the past nine years has been the desire to make tailoring relevant to a new generation. To explore the ways in which the suit or jacket can transition from formal busine...

A few week ago, Drake's asked me to try out their made-to-order tie service, which has been given a new digital home on the website. The prime question is, of course, do you really need a MTO tie? It didn't even featur...

Readers often ask for ‘capsule collections’ of types of clothes – shoes, suits, ties etc. There are many reasons such a list is useful. It can point to the ‘essentials’: those things that...

A few weeks a reader asked for a post on what makes a tie more or less formal, smart or not. It’s a very relevant question. Few men today wear ties, but when they do, they rarely want them to be as smart as the ...

In the spirit of our recent posts on assembling outfits, here’s the process that put this one together. Originating idea: I’ve always liked the way this pale, silk tie from Ralph Lauren goes with my Rubin...

Dark green is a subtle and versatile tie colour. You’re not surprised I think that, right? After all I sing the praises of green at every opportunity. But broad truths bear repeating. With an outfit like the one ...

Conservative accessories are a great thing to master. First, because the acquisition of unusual clothing – such as cord suits or purple jackets – requires something effective to balance it. And second, becaus...

The cost of variety is rarely appreciated by consumers. Among all the things that make up the price of a piece of clothing – materials, labour, rent, tax, marketing, R&D – the waste implicit in a broad ra...

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– NOW SOLD OUT – The Permanent Style club tie is now available to buy on the Drake’s website. The ties are strictly limited to 100 numbered editions and the first 10 will be on sale tonight at the Drake...

Dear Simon, Ties and their lengths are causing me some problems.
I have bought several ties recently, all from Drake’s, but realise that they are slightly too long. Being 5’6’’ I know I am not t...

A quality tie has greater lustre, greater life and, perhaps, lends its wearer a greater sense of authority. But it’s not as easy as just spending more money. Made of silk, wrapped around some kind of lining and ...

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Normal.dotm 0 0 1 603 3440 Euromoney PLC 28 6 4224 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false I’ve always loved Drake’s ties but found it hard to explain why. There isn’t that much to the making of ...

Following our r ecent project with Italian tiemaker Passaggio Cravatte, I’m pleased to offer the second iteration of this collaboration, focusing on regimental ties. (You can see the samples at the bottom of the po...

Normal.dotm 0 0 1 249 1424 Euromoney PLC 11 2 1748 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false Dear Simon, In a recent post ( The modern man needs a good blazer) you explained how versatile a blazer or odd jacket ca...

There isn’t much to the making of a good tie – a slip stitch, good silk – but it’s surprising how few ties there are out there that I rate. Tiny things in cut, design and cloth make a big differen...

Normal.dotm 0 0 1 207 1184 Euromoney PLC 9 2 1454 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false For many, this combination of colours and patterns will be too strong for any occasion, no matter how light hearted. But ta...

Dear Simon, Having read with great interest all your articles (over many, many hours – I am a late-comer to your site) I have been amassing information. Now that I have actually started to purchase clothes etc, the...

I am asked fairly regularly to review ties, often produced by new, small companies. Ties are, I suppose, quite easy to sell online and the lower costs of doing so makes them an obvious product to start with. But it surpr...

Printed (50oz royal twill)As more men wear ties to work again, it is important to understand the small but important differences between the textures of ties. This is essentially what drives the formality of a tie, and m...

A recent piece in City AM by Permanent Style sung the praises of the slip stitch, and gave some advice on maintennace: article here....

Without a tie, men lose the biggest opportunity to express themselves easily in colour and pattern. But I don’t like wearing a tie every day either. The key if you’re not going to wear a tie is to add accents...

One of my favourite colour combinations is pink and green. The pink here is pale, too pale perhaps to be portrayed accurately in the photo, but it provides a subtle field of colour for green to play on. The green tie, fr...

There is one essential to a quality tie: the slip stitch. This is a loose, hand-sewn stitch along the length of the tie, usually finishing in a loop of excess thread at its smaller end. It enables the tie to move along i...

The making of my Marinella tie hasn’t quite gone according to plan. When I received it – admittedly very quickly, after little more than a week – the length was correct but it was the standard width at ...

It’s easy to be fussy about ties; they are such flimsy things. One can become obsessive about getting the length right, or fiddle with the knot throughout the day. The latter, of course, undermines any impression o...

The combination of suit, shirt and tie that a man selects in the morning is certainly not the most important thing about what he wears. That would be the quality and fit of the articles themselves. But picking good combi...

The Henry Poole burgundy that was seen as the lining and overcheck on my DB suit has always been used as the colour for the Sam Cundey special red tie. This year that is being expanded into a full range of ties on the sa...

Ed Morel over at new New York company Panta has started making ties as part of his offering (see prevous post on his superb trousers here) and I received a couple last week. Though the ties are made in New York, they all...

Gentlemen, the brown, brook or rainbow Esquire April 1935, “Brown, by the way, is a new colour for trout-fishing boots. The notion being that they are much less readily discernible to the fish. Other features of th...

A good tie has some form of ‘spring mechanism’ so that, after you have untied it roughly, tugged it out of your collar and hung it up, the mechanism gradually returns it to its natural shape. This is achieved...

Following on from the last, rather popular post on Peckham Rye and Hunter’s founders David Walker and Martin Brighty, here are some more insights from the interview: – When you turn a tie in your hand and it ...

This post refers to ‘three more tips’ because way back in April 2008 I wrote a post called Two Tips on Ties. I think the alliteration rather pleased me at the time. That was a discussion about the best way to...

A shirt with cuffs and collar (usually white) that are a different colour to the body is not easy to wear well. Sometimes known as a contrast collar, it is more often worn badly than flatteringly. It should be a slightly...

Following up on last week’s post on how the silk for a tie is cut, here’s a demonstration of how it is sewn together. The key to any well-made tie is the slip stitch that runs all the way up its centre. It be...

Traditional manufacturers often do things a bit differently. It may take more time, and it will probably be more expensive, but they think it’s worth it. On Permanent Style, that’s something I like to celebra...

The men and women at Vanners were kind enough to send me pictures recently of how my bespoke ties were made down in Suffolk. So here they are, with explanatory captions. The three-piece pattern for the tie is laid out on...

A seven-fold tie doesn’t necessarily have seven folds anymore. That isn’t because of corporate marketing and shortcuts (though the ‘VII fold’ from a certain manufacturer might qualify for that des...

It’s not easy to spot a high-quality tie. Most of the signs that people tell you to look for, such as the loop being sewn in between the folds rather than tacked across, have no real practical benefit. They are jus...

From a purely logical standpoint, the most useful tie you will own is a navy-blue club stripe. Followed by a brown or burgundy in the same pattern. The first reason is that a dark tie is more versatile than a pale tie. I...

Aren’t you just sick of celebrities turning up to the Oscars in a four-in-hand tie? A black tie event demands a bow tie. A long tie may be trendier, but this is an outfit steeped in history. History and tradition d...