Do You Know How to Select Ties for Your Suits?

Section: Neckties, Bowties, and Pocket Squares - Blog

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Matching ties to your suits and shirts can be a challenging, time consuming chore or a simple task, depending on your understanding of how to make all those colours, patterns, and styles play together nicely. Here's a cheat sheet to help you figure it all out and make getting dressed fast and simple.

Firstly, think about how to match your tie to your clothing, not your clothing to your tie. This is an elementary rule for choosing neckwear to complement the expensive tailor made men's suits in your wardrobe. Don't buy a tie because it looks great, but rather buy it because it is proportional to your body and has a colour and pattern that works well with your shirts and suits.

Proportion

Proportion relates to the width and length of the necktie in reference to your body build and clothing style. A large man with a wide front needs a wider than average tie – one that is long enough to reach his belt buckle – in order to balance his look.

Small framed gentlemen should wear smaller, skinnier neckties that are shorter in length. Average-sized men should wear ties whose widths range from 3 – 3.75 inches.

Colour

Consider these two factors to choose the best tie colour for you:

• The message you want to convey
• Colour combinations that complement your complexion

For example, pair a semi-solid, lightly patterned blue and green tie with a cool blue outfit for a muted but sophisticated look. Alternatively, use the contrast offered by a bold red tie on a light coloured business shirt to draw attention to yourself.

Primarily because it captures people's attention and points them to the speaker's face, the red tie is also called the “power tie”.

Skin and Hair Tones

Here's an easy guide to using tie colours to complement your hair and skin tones:

• Men with fair skin and light coloured hair are low contrast and look best in pastel or monochromatic colour combinations.
• Men with light skin and dark hair are high contrast and look best in colour combinations with clearly defined lines between them.
• Men with medium to dark coloured skin and dark hair, can pull off both low and high contrast ties and shirts/men's suits combinations.

While making the distinction between acceptable and great combinations of suits/shirts and ties may be difficult initially, experimenting with various shades trains your eye and makes it easier to create attractive mix and match combinations.

Colour-blind individuals can make dressing simpler by owning interchangeable wardrobe items whose colours do not clash. If necessary, get a friend or your clothier to help you build such a clothing collection, which you can then mix and match with ease.

Patterns

The key to wearing patterned neckwear is to make sure the tie colours don't clash and the patterns on the tie do not conflict with any patterns on your business shirt or suit. When combining a patterned tie with a shirt and suit outfit, ensure that the pattern is not already present in the clothing i.e. a thin-striped shirt should not be combined with a thin-striped tie.

The logic behind this is because similar patterns placed in close proximity to each other create distorted visual effects like the illusion of movement. The easiest way to wear ties with complex patterns is to combine them with pattern-less suits and shirts.

Thereafter, move on to wearing ties that utilise small repeating patterns i.e. dots, foulard or small images. From there, you can have fun experimenting with striped ties, bearing in mind that the striped tie needs to be paired with shirts/suits that have no stripes or shirts/suits that have stripes of a different width and size than those on the tie.

Are you tired of constantly worrying about what tie goes best with which suit or outfit? Why not take a break and get some free fashion advice from the men of Montagio? Schedule yourobligation free styling session today and get some awesome ideas for creating fashionable new ensembles to wow your friends and family.

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