Q. Your rules for buttoning and unbuttoning suits made perfect sense, but I wonder if some men prefer to have their jackets open to display their ties. I have a couple of particularly nice ties where the portions of the design above the lapels don't do justice to the designs and I "accidentally" forget to button so people can appreciate them. Is that so wrong? I also wonder whether some men want their ties visible to point from their heads to accent their height.
A. I have always explained that an important part of the reason for the necktie and the V-shape of a jacket's lapels is to lead the eye up and direct the focus to the face.
There is some truth to an open jacket with a solid or vertically designed tie's helping to create a sense of height, but that can be taken too far. Clothes should not be used primarily to compensate or overstate, and among the most important men's dress rules is the one having to do with tie length: Your ties should always end at your belt buckle. If they do not, they can be adjusted with different knots or with special shortening/tailoring. When you doubt your own tailor, the well-known experts for tie adjustment remains TieCrafters, professionals whom you can find on the web and ship to and from.
As for your open jacket, as always, when you know the rules, you have more permission to break them. If you follow the majority of rules, those in the know will be less likely to "think less of you."
On the other hand, I am concerned about ties with designs that need to be viewed in their entirety to be appreciated, either because they tend to "tell a story" or in order to make their in-questionable-taste logo visible.
One of my long-standing rules that I stress in my lectures is that a businessman should only own "ties that have a name" like stripe, foulard, pindot, paisley, or solid. It should not be a vague brownish-orange tie with squiggles here and there, or a solid tie with triangles in the middle ... even if you call it "Maurice."
To further explain, these names almost always refer to a tie's pattern or texture. Those acceptable for business wear include:
• Solid colors. Can be made of fabrics ranging from the finest silks and linens through square-ended knits in wool or cotton.
• Foulards. Smooth silk with a small, all-over repeat pattern printed in harmonizing colors.
• Stripes. Most often made of repp, a ribbed silk fabric. Sometimes they are subtle; most often they bear bold regimental striped patterns. Regimentals have their origins in the distinctive stripes of various British military regiments, but those meanings have long been lost at the jumbled tie counters of the world.
• Polka dots. The smallest and dressiest of these are called pindots. Avoid large polka dots -- any dot larger than one quarter of an inch is too large (and clownlike).
• Paisleys. An overall pattern of teardrop shapes, less formal, larger, and more colorful than "neats" (as the small foulards are referred to in the clothing industry).
• Plaids. Although some perfectly acceptable ones are made in summer-weight cotton or in wool for winter holiday wear, plaids could be a bit too casual for some, more staid offices.
Again, while those favorite ties of yours may not exactly fit these categories, your knowledgeable questions lead me to believe that the ties you own are high-end, acceptable outliers, or at least have an impressive pedigree that will stand up nicely in well-dressed circles.
Send men's fashion queries to Male Call:
lois.fenton@prodigy.net
High Profile on 02/19/2017