Yet More Goodbyes

This series of seven and four fold mixes together some great color combos that we have discussed and pictured at length in the past.  Green with Blue as well as the blues with browns.  Pretty ties, but like the others, its time for them to go.

Yesterday I pretty much kept it to one pocket square.  This time I mixed and matched to get a little more variety and to match up what i thought was a better and more correct  option.

I started with the celadon  green and sky blue four or seven fold tie again, against the light blue shirt with the navy blue suit and matched up the geometric vintage square for this look.

I thought though that with the green and blue in the tie we could do better with a green square and decided on this large paisley floral piece:

Which looks like this in play:

Below is the navy version of the same tie.  Again, the predominantly blue color invites the earth tones of the brown right in.  While I probably would have been better off with the blue version of this parasol square I went with the brown for this look:

Which looks like this:

For another option at the square I took this brown small paisley pattern for this look:

In play here:

Tomorrow maybe I will do some options on the navy version.  Meanwhile, have a great day!

Escapees in Brown

As mentioned yesterday and earlier as well, we can use a pink tie for both navy and brown suits. (Black and gray as well but thats not the subject of our discussion just now.)

As promised, here is the same pink tie with a brown suit. I could have left the blue shirt but felt it worked better with the ecru (cream).

For the the square you can use an earthy toned one like this floral print.

Shown in play here:

Or you can swap for a more visually rich one, like the parasol in brown shown below.

Have a great weekend!

Tie By Tie 9b (More Showing Off)

I like this tie.  After using it with the charcoal suit that was out, I thought we should take it one step further and put it to use with a Navy Suit, Light Blue Shirt and complementary Green with silver floral Square:

And then for a little spin on things, lets keep the blue shirt but swap the navy suit for a brown suit to show just how far this tie, with the pink silver and ecru stripe can go.

With a square detail here:

Now, lets bring in the pink shirt which also works nicely with the brown suit.  Swap the square out for, the parasol square in the brown tones and this is what you get, (with a High Res of the ensemble here).  I liked the way this combo came out so much that had I not been lazy I would have used it as the tie shot on the site. (It did help that the flash was higher power and less yellow tones showed on the tie than yesterdays post).

Here is the square detail with the high res here.

Your Thoughts?

The Diversion

On Sunday, reader Paul challenged me to find a match for the shirt pictured below. The issue that presents itself as was mentioned in the comments is that the shirt is its bold and wide spaced stripes lend itself to being more to casual and perhaps tieless.

I cannot argue the fact that the width of the stripes of the tie make the shirt better suited (no pun intended) for casual. There is really no way around that. However it doesn’t need to be limited to casual and with the right suit or jacket and tie one can get this in a regular work day as well. Dont get me wrong, this will be far from conservative, but we knew that going in.

The trick here will be to break up the stripes of the shirt by keeping to a toned down tie. Anything with a pattern or design would only serve to cause the eyes to work overtime trying to make heads or tails out of the busy event that is the shirt and the tie. Not having an exact match in the shirt I used a Hickey Freeman His First wide stripe medium blue shirt from a few seasons ago that we had in the kids shop.

The flash may have made it a little more royally looking but here is what I came up with.

(Here is a high res shot, its worth a look)

The blue in the shirt picks up on the blue in the jacket. The blackish pinkish tie (not on the site but in the same family as the linked) gives a complementing color to the blazer as well as the shirt and being a solid is strong enough to garner its own attention yet soft enough to not cause sensory overload. The twill weave of the tie was icing on the cake as it added to the tie without being a pattern. The square, again the parasol in brown.

My digital photography skills didn’t do this ensemble justice but when the wife walked by she exclaimed “Gorgeous!”.

Thoughts?

Naughty and Nice

For the sake of clarity I wanted to elaborate on the brown suit/blue shirt and red tie comment I made yesterday where I stated that I thought it was too much in the color department. Immediately after I posted reader “Paul” questioned me on what I had written earlier about a red tie with a brown suit and a blue shirt where I mentioned and pictured a nice combination. I responded in comment that yes I thought it looked nice in the picture (which I will post below) but when the question of red/brown and blue was a good combo came up, I conjured up thoughts of a redder red and a browner brown and in my opinion that was a bad combo.

These red ties when placed with blue and brown are loud garish and poorly matched and call unwanted attention to the wearer. In my opinion they look cheap together.

Naughty

Very Naughty

Here the tie isnt quite as “fire engine scream it out loud” red as the previous two. Almost a blend between red and burgundy.

Nice!

And since you asked, Paul here is Brown with Burgundy, framed in with a cashmere v-neck sweater from Colombo and accompanied by the brown and burgundy parasol square.

In the words of Borat…

So what do you think? Naughty or nice?

Tis the season! 🙂

Brown and Purple

EDIT:  SEE BELOW FOR RETAKEN PHOTOS

Brown and purple often works but it depends on the color of the purple.   Here are some ties that go well with the brown.  Unfortunately, the tungsten lighting that I shot these under distorted the color of the shirt and I was gone for the day when I discovered that.  I might just retake the shots tomorrow but the colors of the ties were accurate enough to continue with the post so here goes. (As above, shots were retaken with better results.  I have left the originals though for the square).

In the first three pics, the different shades of purple work well.  The first is a light purple color dot tie.  Against what was supposed to be pictured as a lilac shirt with the brown suit, the tie works well.  I left the  parasol square with its browns, burgundies, and slight shades of blue as with the tie that was interesting enough and gave enough color subtlety was important in the square.

This tie is a patterned weave with charcoal/brown background and purple pattern overlay.  Its got strong enough purple overlay to give the appearance of purple which is great for the brown suit.

Again the multi color tie with a dominant purple stripe.  All the colors work (and work well I might add) with brown here.

The dark purple satin field tie is where the purple does NOT work I think.  Its just too dominant in its purpleness!.  Tomorrow I will show where it does work though.

Here are the retaken shots.  They reflect better the accurate  correct color of the ties and the shirt.  I swapped out a violet and beige square on a whim:

And this which I did not think went that well.  (See my comments below in response to Bob.)

Red, White and Blue

In keeping with the blog’s fascination (obsession?) with  Brown suits I show here a brown suit with, red, white (actually off white) and blue ties.

First up a Blue thick twill tie with a predominantly red  square.  The red square was used to brighten it all up a bit.

Tucked away in the pocket the ensemble looks like this:

Moving right along to the deep red solid tie you get this look.  Here I left the square but repositioned it so that there was more blue peeking out.  Even then I didn’t like the red, thinking that there was enough red with the tie so that it now looked cheap, so I swapped it out for the one below.

There, that’s better.  The parasol square here tones it down introducing some burgundy and off white with traces of blue yet mainly browns.

Really now, isn’t this  square magnificent?

Here the off white mini paisley tie adds a subtle look to the brown and blue combo.  The off white blends well with both the blue of the shirt and the brown of the suit.  The square again serves only to complement the entire look.

Finally, having had this multi stripe tie out from last weeks work I slipped it in there.  As you can see, the purple does quite well with the brown. That dear reader though is for another day 😉

The Brown Suit 2

Looking at the stats of this blog, the single most looked at and referred to post is the brown suit post.

The way I see it , if thats what they want then thats what they shall get 🙂

Here is a brown suit with a medium blue/grey stripe.  Paired with a contrast collar and cuff blue pin stripe shirt,matched with a beehive weave green and blue tie, green and Navy braces, and assorted color parasol square.

The result is in this:

Made up from these:

Upon Request

As I mentioned in the past,  I do take requests.  You are free to email me a link to an Item you would like to see matched up and I can try and find a comparable or better yet if you are local you can drop it off and I will work it up for you.

Utilizing the latter offer, a customer dropped off a Brioni Jacket (part of a suit) that you see below.  Its was a hard  jacket to work with for two reasons.  1) The pronounced windowpane, which was making it hard for the customer. and 2) The actual color which was a grayish blue.  I certainly wouldnt have classifies it as a true navy which would have made it easier to work with.

I was somewhat limited by the shirt color which was to be  white or blue.  Given free reign I would have chosen a shade of grey (And thats tomorrow’s photo essay) but alas, word came down from on high (the customer) that he is not a fan of gray shirts.

So here goes:

The color of the jacket lends itself to anything that works with grey/blue, and along with the reddish brownish windowpane check.  You can get a high res to see the colors of the jacket here.

Here in the first shot I paired it with a soft light blue shirt (not on the site), and an orange brown cashmere tie.  The Fabric of the jacket allows for the cashmere tie and the  colors are all right.  The orange tie works with the steely blue as well as with the windowpane which is reddish burgundy.   The square is an orangish brown as well (but not the same color as the tie) which livens the jacket just a bit.  The grey circles in the square only work to enhance the blending together with the jacket.

Due to the burgundy/reddish windowpane in the jacket, its only natural to introduce burgundy into the tie mix (if you own one tie this should be the one) which is what I did with the following results:

(notice that I kept the pattern of the square but substituted the orange for the grey version of it which also has burgundy highlights around the circle.)

Mixing in a blue and burgundy paisley pattern just goes to show that you arent limited to squares and neets patterns in the tie.  Here a uniformly patterened paisley works well with the tie.  I think you might run into trouble with larger and more abstract paisleys, as the size of the pattern will compete with the windowpane.

Now back to a Petronius orange in a neets with a different square which has the orange black blue and another 6 colors to make sure that somehow we match :-).  I like the orange look with this jacket.

Finally, just to prove that we can also do stripes here, I brought back an orangey Brown striped tie that has some blue in it to get this result.  The square looks very busy but of course you will only get a small portion of that visible and then you get the result two pics down.

In this last shot I had paired the tie with a square that looked ok  in real life but bad on the screen so I eliminated the square from the photo (Cropped to the left rather than to the right).  I guess I left the tie since it was there already.  It works.

The Brown Suit

EDIT:  Dont forget to see additional Brown Suit Posts, namely Here as well as using the categories to the right.  Comments are welcome!

Overheard a poster in SF asking about matches for his first Brown suit. Doing a quick search here for brown and blue (Click on the link I did it for you) will give you some idea on how well Browns and Blues can go.

So we dont need any additional help on the Blue and Brown scenario (although I did include one shot of the Brown suit with a Blue shirt as well as one shot of how it looks if you dont get the blues right  which I think shows in the last shot) but what about the pinks and the ecrus?  Mint works well here also but I think that the brown suit with a mint shirt while being perfectly workable in a color sense may be hard to pull off in a work setting.

Here is what we will start with and anyone feel free to jump right in with comments or criticisms. (Kudos are also welcome 🙂 )

Kicking it off with the Ecru Shirt (looks somewhat yellow here but the real color is in the second Photo) and a pistachio color green tie.   There is enough color here overall so I went with a darker type square which probably goes well with almost any outfit.

The second option was the rust colored satin tie with a replacement square.  Again the square picks up the colors from the tie and the shirt and belnds with the brown suit.  Someone suggested red against the brown.  I dont particularly like reds with brown.  It (Red) works well enough with Black and Blues.  For brown I prefer a rust or burnt orange (which also goes with black) type of color.  Again as the tie is bold I used a more sedate color square (if these can be sedate).

Using a pink shirt, the next tie is an oldie but goody.  The hand is beautiful and the irridescent nature of the tie having a warp (thats the undecolor of the weave)  of a blue nature and a weft of the brown.  It basically shows brown but the light hits it a certain way you get the blue tones capitalizing nicely on the beauty of brown and blue.  The brown suit and the pink shirt are naturals as is the brown and blue tie against the pink.  The square, another favorite of mine adds some ecru, browns and a splash of burgundy in there.

Browns and Greys work well and Pink and grey works well so borrowing from that concept and taking a silver grey and pink twill (heavy tie this one) you get this look.  Here the Red/Burgundy  Field square has a little more color than the others as I felt that the contrast was lacking in the tie/shirt combo.

Ahhh…Memories!  This tie from the first collection we did.  Olive and aqua blue stripe/ paisley tie.  Crisp hand with a great color combo, bringing the greens/olives and the blues against a sky blue shirt.   The predominantly  green field of the square draws it all together.

Finally,  I posted this combo because I do NOT like the way it shows against the pale blue shirt.  Compare it to the following pic and see the commentary there.  I think you will agree that the bolder blue is right and this falls flat.

When you compare that blue shirt with this Brown Suit/blue shirt you see how its done correctly and although the suit was changed I think that the difference is in the tone of the blue shirt.