Tie patterns explained

Plain and herringbone

A plain silk tie is the most useful tie a man can own and the hardest to get wrong. It is right for interviews, funerals and weddings, and it partners any patterned shirt or pocket square.

Plain needn’t mean flat. Herringbone — a woven zigzag, named for the bones of a herring — gives a solid colour texture and depth, so a herringbone tie in rust, copper or gold suits tweed as well as worsted.

If you are building a collection from nothing, start with plain navy and plain wine. Between them they cover more occasions than any pattern.

Paisley

The curled teardrop is the buta, a Persian and Indian motif that reached Britain on Kashmir shawls in the late eighteenth century. Weavers in the Scottish town of Paisley, west of Glasgow, copied it so widely in the nineteenth century that the pattern took the town’s name.

Paisley is the great all-rounder: grave enough for the boardroom in navy or wine, festive enough for a wedding in gold or blue, and the classic pattern for a cravat. A wine paisley on a navy suit is about as safe as a patterned tie gets.

Dots

Pin dots are the smallest, little more than a texture at a distance, and they read almost as plain. A navy and white pin dot is a business tie that never draws comment.

Polka dots are larger and more cheerful; they took their name from the polka, the dance craze of the mid-nineteenth century. The bigger the spot, the less formal the tie, so keep large spots for weddings, parties and summer, and wear a navy tie with white polka dots almost anywhere.

Stripes

Diagonal stripes began as the colours of regiments, schools and clubs, and a true regimental or club tie still belongs to its members. A fashion stripe belongs to anyone, but if a stripe looks like a regiment’s colours, it is worth knowing whose they are.

By common convention, British stripes run down from the wearer’s left shoulder towards his right hip, and American makers turned them the other way. There are exceptions on both sides of the Atlantic, so treat it as a tendency rather than a law.

Striped ties are business ties first. Wear them with a plain shirt, or with a shirt stripe of a very different width — more in how to match a tie to a suit and shirt.

Neats and florals

A neat is a small, tidy repeat — squares, diamonds, circles — set evenly on a plain ground. It is the office pattern: from across the room it reads as a colour, from across the desk as a pattern. A neat box pattern on a wine ground will go to any meeting — and, at most meetings, nobody will remember it, which is often the point.

Floral ties run from small flowers scattered on a dark ground to the bold, many-coloured silks of Posh & Dandy. Small florals will do for the office; large ones are for weddings, summer and the races.

Tartan and country motifs

Tartan belongs to Scotland and to winter. Many tartans are linked to a clan, a family or a place, and they come into their own on Burns Night, at Christmas and through the cold months, with tweed or a plain dark suit.

Country motifs — pheasants, Labradors, horses and jockeys, fishing flies, shotgun cartridges — are the patterns of the British countryside. Scattered small on a dark ground they read almost as a neat, which is why a country tie passes in town as well as at a shoot; see country ties explained.

Which pattern, where

The more formal the occasion, the smaller and quieter the pattern. The table gives the usual conventions; the event’s own dress code, where it has one, comes first.