3 tie day

Note from Steve: There are three articles in the November 13 Chicago Tribune on neckties and the differences in the costliest vs. the least expensive with several quotes from menswear expert Alan Flusser.

Tie right
3 routes around buyer's remorse

By Wendy Donahue
Tribune staff reporter
This story contains corrected material, published Nov. 15, 2005.

Fingering the $15 tie and the $150 tie in a lineup might have been easier a few years ago.

"Traditionally, the hand of the tie, if it was sumptuous and silky as opposed to rough and shallow, would indicate quality," said Alan Flusser, a New York menswear designer and author of "Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion" and other sartorial tomes.

"Normally, the more handmade, the more expensive--normally, you wouldn't use an inexpensive fabric in a tie that has a lot of handwork."

Colors might be rich, but not gaudy. Not only would the tie be silk, but so would the inner tip, in the same or complementary silk, rather than acetate.

Today, however, the traditional indicators of quality aren't always so cut-and-tied.

"You can make a very expensive tie in Italy," Flusser said. "And you can make a very expensive-looking tie where the silk is printed in China."

Dictates on hue, pattern and width have flown out the window.

"Almost anything goes," said Stephen Watson, fashion editor at Men's Vogue.

Adding murkiness is the popularity of printed neckties. The pattern is stamped on top, rather than being woven from colored threads on the loom, which contributes a luster and texture that has always made woven ties look more expensive and often more elegant.

But printed ties can be just as expensive. The silk-screening process allows more color, which lends itself to whimsical motifs, like Hermes' hippos ($145). Some men depend on them for levity in their day. (They don't always make Flusser smile.)

While the texture of woven ties can reduce knot slippage, printed ties boast a less sensitive surface.

"Woven ties are nice, but they snag. If your thumb is dry when you're tying your tie, it's gone," said Patrick Palella, CEO of Quantitative Growth Analytics in Chicago, who wears both wovens and prints. "Prints also will tie a finer knot [the dominant look now], because you're not fighting the texture."

So with so much freedom of choice, how's a self-respecting tie-wearer to avoid buyer's remorse?

- Besides visual appeal, Flusser suggests relying on your sense of touch.

- Knot the tie in the store--he suggests a four-in-hand knot as a default, with a proper dimple forming below its midpoint--to see if it pulls up smartly into your collar. Observe how the tie emerges from the task. (Does it regain its composure when you suspend it in front of you?)

- Look at the label to see if it's one you associate with quality.

"Are these definitive guarantees? No," Flusser said. "But it's the best you can do."

Allison's wonderland
Patrick Palella knows all of his Lee Allison ties by whimsical name. "I walk in [to the closet] in the morning and I've got 'Google' and 'Big Ass Plaid' and 'Regimental Stripe'--picking one out is the best part of the day."

In addition to his wovens, Chicago-based Allison just launched a printed tie collection ($90 each), in time for his 10th anniversary. A frog stalks a fly on "Pad Tie." On "Wall Street," a bear and a bull exchange torments (which Allison knows well as a former investment banker).

The mischievous tagline printed inside all of his ties, "Remove Before Sex," has given Allison second thoughts. So he expressed them, deep in the tail, simply as: "Or Knot."

Vines that bind
Both in their 20s, two brothers already had grown weary of the slog to Madison Avenue jobs.

So, on a credit-card cash advance, they started Vineyard Vines ties. The print motifs celebrated the good life, including their summers working on Martha's Vineyard.

Eight years later, the ties have charmed presidents (Bush, the flag print) and rivals (Kerry, the sailing print and more). They still cost $65. But the business is a $25 million affair.

"Anything with a cocktail glass does well," said Ian Murray, 30, half of the Shep-and-Ian team. "You have to realize, the customer is sitting behind his desk, wanting to be doing whatever is on his tie."

The Two-Buck Chucking of ties
Inspired by "Two-buck Chuck" Charles Shaw wine at Trader Joe's, two Naperville attorneys, Gina and Greg Shugar (the name as published has been corrected here and in a subsequent reference in this text), started The Tie Bar online a year ago.

Each of their ties is 100 percent silk, hand-made--and just $15 each.

"If Two-Buck Chuck was able to convince wine connoisseurs you don't have to spend $50 on a bottle of wine, you can do the same thing for ties," Greg Shugar said. "We found a great manufacturer who manufactures for other major designers in the U.S., though we're not allowed to say which ones."

The manufacturer in Shengzhou, China, which calls itself "Necktie City," uses Italian looming machines, "which is why many of the ties made in China--despite the negative connotation--are so well made," he said.

Available in extra long, the ties also are coated for stain-resistance. "We were debating whether to advertise that part--it's too practical, too Dockers," Gina joked.

"But," Greg said, "we're going for the practical type of person in every way."
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On the power of a tie
"There should be nothing casual about Friday--it's 20 percent of your workweek. If you come to work in a polo shirt and khakis and the president of a bank you've been courting shows up and he's wearing a Lee Allison tie, you start that discussion by apologizing [for your appearance]. Why leave it to chance? Whenever I take over a company and people say, `We're not wearing a jacket and tie,' I say, `Yes, you are.'" -- Patrick Palella

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SIZE MATTERS
Wide world of ties just got skinnier

Wendy Donahue, Tribune staff reporter

Chicago actor Tim Rock, 24, doesn't wear suits often.

But ties? All the time.

"There's something sort of modern and also throwback about them," he said.

Superslim is the style for him and other fashion-forward types these days.

J. Crew has gone boarding-school skinny with its Cambridge ties--2 3/4 inches versus its typical 3 1/2 inches, inspired by resurgent fashion fondness for the movie "Dead Poets Society," said Todd Snyder, vice president of men's design. (Sold individually for $39.50, they also form J. Crew's new Tie of the Month Club, launched for the holidays--12 ties, with free shipping, for $475. Call 866-739-5944 or go to jcrew.com.)

Snyder and others have gone so far as to resurrect the knit version.

"Our editor in chief has made it his signature," said Stephen Watson, fashion editor at Men's Vogue. "He wears very slim double-breasted suits with this knit tie--it almost goes back to Gianni Agnelli, the chairman of Fiat in the '50s and '60s, who sort of popularized the narrow tie."

Words to the standard tie wearer: Even that width has narrowed subtly, said Stan Gellers, senior editor for menswear weekly DNR, thanks in part to a similar slimming of suits.

"Now 3 1/2 inches is the standard," Gellers said. "Not too long ago it was 4 inches."

For every action there's an opposite reaction: Chicago designer Kent Nielsen makes a statement with wide-load ties--4 3/8 inches.

Men's Vogue approves of that too.

"We've found a very wide tie looks very rich," Watson said.

But don't equate narrow with unkempt.

"There was a time when I wore ties with T-shirts," Rock admitted. "But once Avril Lavigne was doing that, I knew it was over."
- - -
Fit tip
"The width of a necktie should have some relationship to the width of the jacket's lapel. And the width of the lapel relates to the shoulder of the jacket, which relates to the shoulders. If a big guy wears a narrow tie, he'd look pretty dumb, even if that's the fashion." --Menswear god Alan Flusser, who adds that a tie shouldn't fall below the waistband of your trousers

__________

Ties that blind you to the dollar sign

By Wendy Donahue
Tribune staff reporter

At a cocktail party, Patrick Palella, CEO of a strategic-growth consulting firm in Chicago, lowers his voice to spill a secret of his brethren:

Some men in the financial world "forget" to feed the tail of their $145 Hermes necktie through its loop, so that it spontaneously strays from alignment--baring the brand's stamped logo to the world.

Flashing fetish or not, for many men, a $70-plus designer tie can juice self-confidence. To the cognoscenti, it can radiate success.

But even though men once again are sticking their necks out for ties--in the 12 months ending August 2005, sales were up 5.3 percent from the same period a year earlier--not all believe in spending the equivalent of the shirt off their backs for one.

Enter The Tie Bar, an Internet business started a year ago by husband-wife attorneys in Naperville. All of the ties are 100 percent woven silk, handmade--and just $15 each.

John Potterton, 54, who runs a conference center on Michigan Avenue, liked what he saw--and heard--after he ordered two Tie Bar ties two months ago.

"What really was the killer was, when I came to work wearing the first one, people said, 'Nice tie.' A few days later, I had the other on. Same thing: 'Nice tie.' I wear suits every day, and I usually don't get comments. It made me feel good."

He ordered two more. Then two more.

"The same thing happened. I felt like I was wearing a whole new wardrobe and it was just a $15 tie."

Palella, 48, who usually wears Hermes or Chicago-based Lee Allison ties (about $90), decided to try The Tie Bar too.

"The quality of the silk is not that of an Allison or Hermes, but they cost 10 to 20 percent of those brands--no angst if you spill soup on them," he said. "All in all, not bad for the money and great service."

He and Potterton see eye to eye on one point:

Even though a necktie has no real function, it's the focal point.

"As a friend reminded me," Palella said, "before they see your wife or girlfriend, before they see your office or home, before they see your boat or car, they see your tie."