The Necktie - From Tie History By Allan Flusser

Besides being useful against colds, stiff necks and tooth ache, a necktie enables one to know more about the person who is wearing it..
Said by Emil De L'Empese in 1818

The history of neckties dates back a mere hundred years or so, for they came into existence as the direct result of a war. In 1660, in celebration of its hard-fought victory over Turkey, a crack regiment from Croatia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) visited Paris. There, the soldiers were presented as glorious heros to Louis XIV, a monarch well known for his eye toward personal adornment. It so happened that the officers of this regiment were wearing brightly colored handkerchiefs fashioned of silk around their necks. These neck cloths, which probably descended from the Roman fascalia worn by orators to warm the vocal chords, struck the fancy of the king, and he soon made them an insignia of royalty as he created a regiment of Royal Cravattes. The word "cravat," incidentally, is derived from the word "Croat."

It wasn't long before this new style crossed the channel to England. Soon no gentleman would have considered himself well dressed without sporting some sort of cloth around his neck -- the more decorative, the better. At times, cravats were worn so high that a man could not move his head without turning his whole body. There were even reports of cravats worn so thick that they stopped sword thrusts. The various styles knew no bounds, as cravats of tassled strings, plaid scarves, tuffs and bows of ribbon, lace and embroidered linen all had their staunch adherents. Nearly one hundred different knots were recognized, and as a certain M. Le Blanc, who instructed men in the fine and sometimes complex art of tying a tie, noted, "The grossest insult that can be offered to a man comme il faut is to seize him by the cravat; in this place blood only can wash out the stain upon the honor of either party."

In this country, ties were also an integral part of a man's wardrobe. However, until the time of the Civil War, most ties were imported from the Continent. gradually, though, the industry gained ground, to the point that at the beginning of the twentieth century, American neckwear finally began to rival that of Europe, despite the fact that European fabrics were still being heavily imported.
In the 1960s, in the midst of the Peacock Revolution, there was a definite lapse in the inclination of men to wear ties, as a result of the rebellion against both tradition and the formality of dress. But by the mid-70s, this trend had reversed itself to the point where now, in the 1980s, the sale of neckwear is probably as strong if not stronger than it has ever been.

How to account for the continued popularity of neckties? For years, fashion historians and sociologists predicted their demise -- the one element of a man's attire with no obvious function. Perhaps they are merely part of an inherited tradition. As long as world and business leaders continue to wear ties, the young executives will follow suit and ties will remain a key to the boardroom. On the other hand, there does seem to be some aesthetic value in wearing a tie. In addition to covering the buttons of a shirt and giving emphasis to the verticality of a man's body (in the same way that the buttons on a military uniform do), it adds a sense of luxury and richness, color and texture, to the austerity of the dress shirt and business suit.

Perhaps no other item of a man's wardrobe has altered its shape so often as the tie. It seems that the first question fashion writers always ask is, "Will men's ties be wider or narrower this year?"

In the late 1960s and early 70s, ties grew to five inches in width. At the time, the rationale was that these wide ties were in proportion to the wider jacket lapels and longer shirt collars. This was the correct approach, since these elements should always be in balance. But once these exaggerated proportions were discarded, fat ties became another victim of fashion.


The proper width of a tie, and the one that will never be out of style, is 3 1/2 inches (2 3/4 to 3 1/2 inches are also acceptable). As long as the proportions of men's clothing remain true to a man's body shape, this width will set the proper balance. Though many of the neckties today are cut in these widths, the section of the tie where the knot is made has remained thick -- a holdover from the fat, napkinlike ties of the 1960s. This makes tying a small, elegant knot more difficult. Yet the relationship of a tie's knot to the shirt collar is an important consideration. If the relationship is proper, the knot will never be so large that it spreads the collar or forces it open, nor will it be so small that it will become lost in the collar.

Standard neckties come in lengths anywhere from 52 to 58 inches long. Taller men, or those who use a Windsor Knot, may require a longer tie, which can be special ordered. After being tied, the tips of the necktie should be long enough to reach the wasteband of the trousers (the ends of the tie should either be equal, or the smaller one just a fraction shorter).


After you've confirmed the appropriateness of a tie's shape, next feel the fabric. If it's made of silk and it feels rough to the touch, then it is a silk of inferior quality. Silk that is not supple is very much like hair that's been dyed too often. It's brittle and it's ends will fray easily. If care hasn't been taken in the inspection of ties, you may find misweaves and puckers.

All fine ties are cut on the bias, which means they have been cut across the fabric. This allows them to fall straight after the knot has been tied, without curling. A simple test consists of holding a tie across your hand. If it begins to twirl in the air, it was probably not cut on the bias and it should not be purchased.
Quality neckties want you to see everything: they have nothing to hide. Originally, neckties were cut from a single square of silk, which was then folded seven times in order to give the tie a rich fullness. Today the price of silk and the lack of skilled artisians prohibit this form of manufacture. Ties now derive their body and fullness by means of an additional lining.

Besides giving body to the tie, the lining helps the tie hold its shape. The finest quality ties today are lined with 100 percent wool and are generally made only in Europe. Most other quality ties use a wool mixture. The finer the tie, the higher the wool content. You can actually check. Fine linings are marked with a series of gold bars which are visible if you open up the back of the tie. The more bars, the heavier the lining. Many people assume that a quality tie must be thick, as this would suggest that the silk is heavy and therefore expensive. In fact, in most cases it is simply the insertion of a heavier lining that gives the tie this bulk. Be sure, then, that the bulk of the tie you are feeling is the silk outer fabric and not the lining.

After you have examined the lining, take a look at the tie just above the spot where the two sides come together to form an inverted V. In most quality ties, you will find a stitch joing the back flaps. This is called the bar tack, and it helps maintain the shape of the tie.

Now, if you can, open up the tie as far as possible and look for a loose black thread. This thread is called the slip stitch and was invented by a man named Joss Langsdorf in the 1920s to give added resilience to the tie. The fact that the tie can move along this thread means that it won't rip when it is being wrapped tightly around your neck, and that it will, when removed, return to its original shape. Pull the slip stitch, and the tie should gather. If you can do this, you've found a quality, handmade tie.

Finally, take the tie in your hand and run your finger down its length. You should find three separate pieces of fabric stitched together, not two, as in most commercial ties. This construction is used to help the tie conform easily to the neck
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Top Quality Mens Custom Made Suits And Shirts

BY www.mycustomtailor.com

With the transformation of the men’s suit business into a world of designer fashion and the almost complete mechanization of its manufacturing process, determining the contemporary suit’s quality and intrinsic value is the most elusive challenge facing today’s shopper. Like women’s ready-to-wear, the majority of men’s tailored clothing today is sold on its name recognition, fit, and aura of fashionability. The era when men’s suits were expected to carry a man from one decade to another and were purveyed based on the relative merits of their quality and hand tailoring is as dated as sized hosiery, exact-sleeved dress shirts, and the three-piece suit.

Except for a handful of factories left in the world that continue to tailor suit primarily by hand, most clothing manufacturers have either incorporated the latest technology into their production process or closed shop. The cost of skilled labor and the time required to create a garment in the old-world manner has limited this wearable’s market to those retailers and consumers who appreciate the quality and work behind the hand-stitched garment’s higher price. In his hallowed fitting rooms the specialty retailer must be able to explain the nuances of this handcrafted creation from its silk thread and hand made buttonholes to the superiority of its worsted fabric.

Beginning in the 1920s, before machine started replacing tailors, suits were grads from 1 to 6 in a system that specified the number of hand operations used to create the final product. For instance, a number 1, the lowest grade of suit, was almost entirely machine-made. A number 2 coat could use some handwork to finish the cuffs, collar, and buttons. A number 3 ha to have these three components finished by hand. A number 6, the highest grade on the scale, was made almost entirely by hand. Of course, some manufacturers would misrepresent these numbers in an attempt to sell their product at a higher quality rating it deserved, but at least the system gave the retailer and consumer some sort of uniform standard.

As technical improvement in machine-made clothes blurred the advantages of more costly hand crafting, tailored clothes have become creations of refined engineering and industrialized production. With the tailor’s shears and hand-sewn stitches being replaced by computers, laser knives, conveyor belts, fusing, and high-speed pressing machinery, the modern men’s suit has become a marvel of tailoring science and technological genius. And as with any automates creation, the measure of its quality is time, in this case minutes.

The modern suit that sells for $395 takes approximately 80 minutes of uninterrupted labor, while the higher-profile designer garment retailing for $1,495 requires approximately 150 minutes of continuous construction. In order words, little more than an hour of actual labor and quality control separate the least costly from the most expensive machine-made suit. While the higher-prices suit’s shell fabric, linings, facings, and fusibles are more costly and produce a softer, more flexible garment, they do not account for the entire difference in retail price. A good part of the disparity represents the expenses involved in operating a high-profile designer fashion business; publicity, advertising, fashion shows, and the overhead of a design studio.

Today, most men’s suits are constructed in the same manner as a dress shirt’s collars and cuffs, whose outside layers are top-fused for permanent smoothness. First developed during the 1950s, the process of bonding or gluing a layer to an outside shell fabric has evolved to a level where it can nearly simulate the softness and flexibility of the hand-sewn canvas used in tailored men’s clothes. Formerly, this layer of reinforcement places between the coat’s outer cloth and inner lining consisted of one or more ply of horsehair and regular canvas secured by numerous hand stitches. When suspended by the elasticity of its hand make silk stitches, its free-floating dynamic gave the jacket’s front a lasting shapeliness and drape while lending pliancy and spring to the roll of its lapel. The scientific advances seen in the development and performance of the more traditional artisan methods. With the consumer requesting lighter, softer tailored clothing, these fusibles allow a cost to mold to the wearer, though they sacrifice fit and longevity in the process.

So, how does a man cut through all this industry mumbo jumbo to determine his prospective suit’s level of quality? The answer is complex and difficult to translate into the written word, since these automated garments lack the visible handwork of top quality tailoring to act as benchmarks. The cost efficiency of the new technology encourages manufacturers to incorporate many of the details associated with more expensive tailored clothed into less costly products, rendering the ranking of quality even less clear. Crotch pieces and lines knees are no longer the exclusive province of the most expensively tailored suit trousers, while underarm sweat shields and machine stitching that appears hand-sewn grace jackets with less than lofty pedigree.


I will break down the subject into price brackets that represent various generic methods of manufacture so our investigation will have some boundaries and focus. Please remember that this is a discussion about the quality of the product’s construction, not the beauty of its design. As you will learn later, a wearable’s longevity is predicated more on its design than its quality. A well-designed $350 suit can provide more years of wear than an expensive hand-tailored worsted cashmere suit whose shoulders look as though the hanger is still holding them up.

The finest ready-made suits are constructed like those that are custom-made, except the workplace has been organized into a miniature factory. This means each garment is individually hand-cut, lining, pocket, and sleeves have all been sewn by hand; and everything is hand-pressed. At this level of quality, the construction or padding of the jacket’s lapels and collar is stitched totally by hand. There could be two thousand stitches or more in a single-breasted jacket’s lapel; these will hold the garment’s shape intact through all weathers, fair or foul. For this rarefied ready-made suit, one must expect to pay at least &2,000.

The next ministep below this level of quality can boast the same level of workmanship, but the time-consuming lapel hand-basting is done by a special machine. Those parts of the coat that need flexibility and movement continue to be sewn by hand – armholes, shoulders, collar. At a minimum, you should be able to look at the inside of the jacket and confirm that the felling of its linings in these areas in hand done. Next, you should take the coat’s bottom front, three inches from its bottom and two inches from its edge. Rub it between the coat’s outer shell and inner lining. This confirms the coat has a canvas front rather than a fused one. It is the work of a tailor and the garment’s shape will remain intact as long as it is well cared for. Selling for between $1,500 and $2,000, it will endure the ravages of extended wear.

Moving down to he next level of quality, you find the semitraditional or semi-canvas-front coat whose bottom front is fused but not its lapels, collar, and chest. Its canvas inner lining floats, held in place by hand stitches so it moves more naturally with the coat. The beauty of this hybrid is that its lapels roll and stay on the coat’s chest more naturally than fused lapels will. The canvas inner lining gives the lapels more spring so that their edges remain in contact with the jacket’s chest. One can always tell a fused lapel because its edges tend to curl away from the jacket. The semitraditional make has its shoulders, armholes, and collar hand-stitched so that the presentation around the man’s face and upper torso appears supple and rich. The cost for such a suit usually falls between $850 and $1,200.

The majority of today’s tailored clothing is sewn completely by machine and constructed through fusing. One version is made “open” or in what we call the American system. Parts such as the sleeve and collars are assembled separately first, then put together. In the “Two-shell” or German system, the entire inside lining shell is assembled separately from the outside fabric shell. Then the one is sewn inside the other, The two-shell calls for less labor and prides itself on its consistency. While requiring additional manufacturing steps, the American system utilizes more basting stitches, elements of make that in the end come out of the coat but help build in its enduring shape. The price of this type of garment can range wildly, from $395 up to $1,495 depending on whose label is inside

The only thing one needs to consider when making a choice between the least expensive methods of tailoring is alterability. Most men would never even consider this factor, but they must. Since the two-shell garment only has 3/8” Outlet in its seams, the man who gains ten pounds or more will find it impossible to have the coat let out. Imagine spending $750 on a suit only to find out it cannot be altered the garment made in the traditional open way because its shape comes from building in curves while the engineered coat’s shape, due to its flat, straight-lined approach to make, will lose its shapeliness faster.

In conclusion, I would like to remind you that the aforementioned has been written as a general guide. Within each of these categories, you will encounter garments that resist easy classification. I hope the information passed on here will enable you to ask the correct questions when trying to get a grip on this difficult subject.

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