There was a man on the 87 bus two Tuesdays ago wearing a wool scarf wrapped around his neck so tightly it appeared to be strangling him. Both ends were stuffed down the front of his coat as if he’d caught someone in the act and was attempting to hide the evidence. It wasn’t a cravat, he’d wrapped a scarf incorrectly. And that is my issue right there before we get into any of the more stylish elements. Everyone cares about how you tie it. The knot is the easy part.
Nobody cares about the two things that will ultimately dictate whether you look like an idiot or you’ve got some idea of what you’re doing, which are what the material you choose is doing to your neck and how much of the damned thing you’ve actually got hanging down.
I say this as someone who purchased a real silk cravat for £4 from that shop at the corner we’re all secretly obsessed with after watching YouTube videos on cravats specifically because I believed I had it cracked forever.
Wore it once and looked like a bumpkin who didn’t realise their outfit was six degrees of separation from Stevenage Midland mechanics stocks. Took me embarrassingly long googling and failing to work out why, and no it wasn’t the knot, I can tie a basic knot just fine, it was that because I’d chosen the wrong weight of material for what I wanted to do with it nothing had worked and no amount of savvy folding was going to fix it.
The material is king, far more than the knot will ever be
Silk is always going to be the first one people reach for because well that’s what a cravat is “meant” to be and fair enough it hangs nicely and has just enough sheen that you know somebody made it do that on purpose rather than accidentally walked past a unicorn. But silk is slippery, fucking slippery and a lightweight silk cravat is not going to stay put on a chilly Birmingham morning. It moves around. You adjust it on the bus, re-tie it on your desk then by the time lunch rolls around it’s sat halfway down your neck looking exactly like that guy who didn’t know what he was doing. That £4 wonder I mentioned above did precisely that: fantastic colour but appalling behaviour, donated within two weeks of buying it.
A wool or wool blend moves across your collar and frankly works better for 99% of people not going full on evening wear formalities. It grips your collar rather than sliding across it, it actually has some weight to it so the knot stays put once you’ve sat, and comes through coat pockets lookin like you haven’t slept in it. Mine’s rust coloured, has survived three winters now despite being £2.50 from the aforementioned popular shop, and has never needed adjusting once after the initial tying in the mornings. Tie test, not how it looks at your reflection at ten o’clock, how it looks at two without you fiddling with it.
Cotton’s the outlier nobody really talks about but honestly is the happy medium if you want something that’ll work for warmer months, has enough body to keep it stiff but not enough of silk’s slip. The majority mistake isn’t choosing the wrong fabric, it’s choosing the fabric that looks good online as opposed to the one that actually behaves. If you find yourself constantly adjusting your cravat/neck scarf it isn’t a fashion choice my friends, it’s a bloodyurance policy you signed yourself up for. I’ll take looking slightly less shiny every day and not having to think about my neck, cheers.
Volume is where 99% men will always screw up
This is why that guy on the bus was murdered by his scarf and no it’s not the knot, it’s that he chose something far too voluminous for the look he wanted to achieve and then tried to squish it all into one teeny area around his neck. Scarves have a lot of fabric they’re supposed to loop and drape but a tucked in cravat/neck scarf needs to be thinner on the bit that sits against your throat and fuller on the bit that hangs down. Try and stuff enough scarf into a cravat tie and you end up with what he had; a bulge under your chin that shouts TRYING TOO HARD rather than stylish gentleman.
You can fix this! It just so happens to be another thing most people don’t think about and goes hand in hand with the material complaint. Something specifically cut as a cravat/neck scarf will have less fabric through the middle rather than trying to repurpose an existing scarf from your collection. Tried that method for months, quarter folding a scarf and jamming it down my shirt like it’s some sort of danish pastry only for the volume to still be off. Thick ends from the scarf plus thick middle didn’t equal out like I hoped, just lots of wool grating across my throat like some sort of ragged collar brace. Eventually picked up an actual thin cravat style scarf, folded it once, tucked it into my shirt and wow did the difference stand out. Enough so that even my mum noticed.
Let’s just say she doesn’t normally comment unless I’ve done something wrong.
The opposite end of that issue is having too loose and this is where people fail to notice they’re doing it.
Too little fabric on your cravat and it looks like it’s trying to fall off your neck as opposed to sitting there out of want. Plops us right back into that adjusting on public transport segment from the material rant except this time it isn’t the blame of the material sliding about, it’s you for not holding enough together when you tucked it around your neck. See how much extra length you’ve got past the knot? Too much and you’re choking your neck. Too little and it’ll look like you didn’t put enough scarf on…which is exactly what that guy on the bus failed to realise he did.
If you get the material matter nailed and the volume sits nice you’re laughing for the knot aspect really, any of the basic knots are fine once you have those two ticking right, and no freakyautical diagram of knots is going to fix you if you got them wrong. That right there is advice, not “here tie your cravat”. Buy something that grips instead of slides and in the length it’s supposed to be sold at, not ‘I already own a scarf this will do’. Took me a crisis outfit moment turning into laughs with my mum at how I looked to realise that, so may as well learn from my mistakes.
