Helped a kid finish tying his tie last Tuesday while he stood in our stockroom. He was watching a tutorial on his phone, balanced against a pile of returns, attempting knot number three for his brother’s wedding. On his third attempt he swiveled around at me and asked “how do you know when it’s actually tied properly?” – As opposed to what he asked before, which was something along the lines of “how do you tie one?” YouTube’ll happily teach you how to tie a four in hand in under half a minute, but fails to mention that the knot he’d just completed – technically perfected knots for beginners – every overlapping section aligned – made him look like he’d pinched his dad’s tie and was taking it to court.
Cause the thing that took me weeks of pretending like I knew what I was talking about to realise is that the knot is maybe thirty percent of tying a tie correctly. It’s important, sure, tie it wrong and it’ll look messy, but you can have a masterpiece of a knot on a proportionally horrible tie and it’ll still look bad. There’s two pieces to this puzzle and neither of them are “what kind of knot should I use?”
The length should end where you think it doesn’t matter
Your tie should end exactly at your belt buckle. Not ABOVE it.
Not sitting two inches below it swinging around as you walk.
I can hear you now “who cares if it hangs down another inch or two? Seems like a silly thing to worry about.” Trust me buddy, I work retail, I am that person. But it is by far the most common issue I notice when I see men out and about wearing ties that look like they don’t quite fit… and it’s the easiest to fix. Because if your tie is too short, it looks like you stole it. If it’s too long, it looks like you threw your outfit together in the dark and didn’t bother looking in the mirror.
Our kid in stock had his ending about three inches past his buckle, and was baffled when I pointed it out. Apparently it didn’t occur to him because he was so focussed on making sure the knot looked nice that the length was an afterthought. Kind of backwards, when you think about it. The length needs to be right FIRST, THEN you can worry about knotting it, because a slightly off knot on a properly lengthed tie will read as “perfect” to anybody not inspecting it, but a flawless knot on a tie that’s too long or short reads as pure cosplay. Nin ninety percent of tie fixes are adjusting how far you lift your wide end up from your narrow end when you start tying, and it feels stupid at first, you’ll undo it and have to start over again I promise. More than once. That’s not you being bad at ties, that’s called “getting used” to ties.
What they don’t tell you when googling how to tie a tie is that this adjustment varies depending on your height/equally as important; YOUR body’s proportions. Sorry to nerd out on the details but tall guys have a different waist-to-chest ratio than shorter guys, which matters when you’re trying to get that perfect length. I’m 6’4” and used to just accept that every regular tie I bought wasn’t long enough to reach my belt buckle unless I tied it as tiny as possible (because the material had run out.) Regular ties are generally only about fifty seven inches long tip to tip and unless you’re on the shorter side or wearing a standard fit shirt that sits differently than a slim fit, it’s not enough. Long enough ties are a fucking thing, they just usually aren’t displayed with the rest of your ties. Grabbed my first extra long tie when I was 26 years old because no one told me they existed. Twenty six. Christ. Spend too much of your life tying ties that are just an inch too short and suddenly you’re blaming your technique when really you just made a measurement error.
The width has to match your collar, not vice versa.
Lastly, and probably the thing that throws off more outfits than a wrongly tied knot ever will. The width of the tie needs to MATCH the lapel of your suit/coat, and more importantly the spread of your collar. If those don’t fit together, nothing else will. Skinny ties are two and a half inches at most across the blade. Bermuda shorts are an appropriate comparison for how they look next to a wide spread collar. Wide ties – we’re talking fifty years of tradition wide – wedged into a button down collar just looks like it’s fighting itself. Dude actually came into my store once and complained to me about his knot not lying right when it was CLEARLY the collar vs tie width issue. He spent fifteen minutes trying to adjust ways he could when the answer was literally “don’t wear that big of a collar with that skinny of a tie.” Different shirts, different collar spread.
Guy comes into my store not too long ago, big shoulders, giant collar. Bought this guy a tie online because it was on sale, didn’t try it with his own shirt to make sure it fit. Three inches wide at its widest point, probably closer to two and a half when you account for the tapering. Looked defeated wearing it. It wasnt’ the knot, the length was fine. The god damn tie was too narrow for his shirt. Swapped him into something close to three and half inches and suddenly went from sad lettuce to trying to kill him. SAME SHIRT. SAME COLLAR. Tie fixed it.
See, this is where I’m gonna dingreeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaand a little bit counter whatever narrative you’ve found on tie tying out there.
The knot doesn’t matter.
Not wrong’t matter. If those two pieces of the puzzle are matching WHAT you put your tie through isn’t as important as you’d think. Full Windsor, half Windsor, some bushcraft spin on a Pratt – doesn’t matter which you choose, so long as it fits the opening of your collar and you can stop stressing about it. Full Windsor in a button down points = shoveled. Four in hand with a wide spread collar and you’re back to square one. Tie too skinny for shirt. Fix those two issues and suddenly any knot looks “good enough” because your brain’s not going “uh… something looks off but I can’t put my finger on it.” That’s it right there. Once you learn how to properly match your tie to your shirt you don’t need to know how to tie a tie, you just need to know how not to fuck it up.
Stop making the knot the finished project and start making it the last five percent you touch up.
