Cravatomancy

Two day's ties

I'm a little behind, so please allow me to combine Thursday's and Friday's ties into one cosmically significant post.

On Thursday I wore this:

It is another variation on the paisley theme, this time a Lewin tie, tie-makers who I think have become a bit too big for their boots. But this is a favourite of mine.

Friday's tie was knitted; I'm never sure about knitted ties. They were all the rage among the art masters who taught me in the sixties. Whether they work as well on a librarian in a new century is debateable.

Neck and neck

Part of the point of this exercise, wearing and photographing every tie I own, is to be able to make an inventory and a taxonomy of the collection. So it will be interesting to see which makers I prefer. This is another Liberty tie, and I think they and Duchamp are, if you will pardon the expression, neck and neck.

Another Liberty tie

Today I frolicked in the groves of Academe, so I chose a Liberty tie. This one is in a curious heavy material. I'm sure a textile artist could tell me what it is.

It is one of my favourites, though it is not a tie that has ever elicited compliments. Then again, there is the school of thought that says that if one's dress provokes comments, then it is probably over-ostentatious.

Swishing

Every so often I shall leaven the stodge of endless pictures of my Adam's apple and double chin adorned with expensive bits of cloth with some more substantial reflections on things vaguely to do with ties. Among those I have in mind are:

• the political economy of ties, or how Marx's analysis of the tendency of capital to monopoly is born out by the changing street directory entries for Jermyn Street
• some neglected aspects of the history of the tie
• and of course, a late sixties/early seventies essay on Freud, D.H. Lawrence, ties and the phallos, entitled Did Mellors wear a tie? I wasn't a sixth-former in that era for nothing

Today, I want to refer you to the incomparable Paper Flowers, who has been blogging about a clothes-swish. To the extent that I understand a clothes-swish, it is a sartorial bring-and-buy, except no cash changes hands; there does seem to be a lot of drinking, though. One of the participants told me that 'clothes-swishing [is] one of those things that women do and men are scared of.'

I wonder...would men swish? Would a tie swish work? Look at the elegance and joie de vivre of the participants. Could men do that too? Probably not.

Coney catching

This is one of my favourite ties, bought well over ten years ago but still wearable. By Holland and Holland, it shows rabbits at play. Not shown is the huntsman creeping up behind them with his Holland and Holland gun.

Paisley again

Friday's tie and I return to paisley. This one uses madder, showing the characteristically subtle tones of that dye. I bought it from Kent and Curwen's shop on the corner of Piccadilly and St James's, which closed some years ago.

An unlucky tie

This tie bears a curse. I wore it to an interview for a job, and while I was successful at the interview, the job turned out to be the worst job I ever had.

It's another Duchamp.

Spots

Today I choose a red spotted tie, cheerful enough to banish post-election pain. I like spotted ties and should wear them more. This one is by Harvie and Hudson.

Don't panic

There is so much uncertainty, political, economic, existential, that I felt it necessary to do my bit to restore some calm to public life, so I chose a plain maroon tie by Turnbull & Asser. Their ties are expensive, but worth the investment. This one has stood up to repeated wear (I am not the gentlest of knot-tiers) and still hangs well. Moreover, it is generously cut. I have a long torso and find many ties too short to take a decent knot and hang correctly, that is to say exactly to the waistband of my trousers, not falling an inch or two above, exposing shirt buttons and paunch, nor hanging down over my flies.

Our first guest blogger

Pray silence for our first guest tie blogger, Sweder, ultra-marathon runner, sometime roadie to the stars, gourmand and boulevardier in his native town of Lewes, to be found on Twitter as @sweder. He offers this from his remarkable collection