A Guide To Finding The Right Tie Width

Like the length of the skirts for females, the width of the tie changes for men in an unceasing momentum that is not predictable, except that what was once wide will be narrow again and what is now narrow may soon widen. Short of extremes like the super wide clown tie that reaches all the way to the floor, men's ties expand and compress in width depending on the whim of the tie-fashion God. There really is no standard to judge what tie is the "proper" width because the widths vacillate from very wide to very thin over the decades and back again.

Currently tie widths are holding at the pattern of "medium" width, which is about 3 and one half inches wide. This is not too wide and definitely not narrow, but that could change as soon as the next rock star or pop star or someone that the tie-fashion God has nominated as the arbiter of taste in men's tie fashion wears a tie that goes in one width direction or the other.

In fashion when a medium solution is presented as the current fashion, it beckons like a blaring siren to someone, anyone, who is a fashionista with any kind of influence to rebel against normality. This propels them to create an extreme in one direction or the other. Fashion hates to be static and will bring changes about, just for the sake of change. Surprisingly European ties are currently slightly narrower than American ties - do we see a trend developing? Maybe so.

There has been a research study correlating the rise and fall of the stock market with the rise and fall of the hemlines of women's skirts, but to our knowledge there has never been a research study comparing the width of men's ties with general economic conditions. It would be an interesting thing to investigate.

Luckily when the width of the tie is in the medium range, as it is now, you can get away with wearing ties that are a little wider or a little narrower and nobody will notice the difference if you cheat a bit. This assumes, of course that your ties are still in good shape, with good patterns, and good colors and don't look like you got them from the nearest second-hand bazaar.

You can cheat a little bit by how you tie the tie itself. If you have a tie that is a bit too wide, then cheat up on the tie and let the front part be slightly longer than the part behind after you tie it. This is a minor adjustment so don't go crazy with it and works best if your jacket remains buttoned so your tie does not look like it extends too far down the front. But with this method you can have a slightly narrower portion of the tie exposed at the neck than would be shown if both the front part of the tie and the smaller part behind it are of equal lengths.

If you have a tie that is too narrow you cannot do this in reverse (unless your jacket remains buttoned) because then the narrower part of the tie that is behind the wider part in front will extend down past the front wider part and expose the mixed up condition of the tying.