3 Tie Buying Tips - How To Buy A Quality Necktie Online - Choosing The Right Tie
Hi! I'm Antonio Centeno, the founder of Real Men Real Style. Today, we're going to be talking
about how to select a quality necktie.
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Okay, how to select a quality necktie. This has actually become a lot harder because many
of us are buying neckties online and we see a wide range of prices. We see neckties selling
for $10. We see neckties selling for $100. What's the difference? How can you choose
a quality necktie? Because really what you want is the value. You want a good deal is
what you want, and you want to be able to identify the best quality tie that you can
afford.
I'm going to give you a few tips where we're going to get into some immediate things you
can look at to make sure you get the right tie for you, and then we'll talk about the
kind of slippier items which is harder to do online, but it's not impossible, and you
can find a great deal out there.
Okay, so the hardest thing and the one that we used to be able to do all the time is that
you could walk into a store and you can pick up a necktie. You can feel it. You can hold
it. You can stretch it a bit. You can see how it comes back on itself. You could feel
the hand of the tie. That's the term commonly referred to it, and you could put it up next
to -- you could just get a feel of that tie literally.
Nowadays, much harder and what you need to rely on instead is good photography, but also,
you need to make sure you're dealing with a merchant that you trust who has a good return
policy, not that you think you're going to need it, but just in case. At the end of the
day though, you need to have a merchant who you trust, somebody who says this tie was
handmade and it was; somebody who says it was made in England and it was; somebody who
says that it uses a very high quality silk, that it's been hand-woven, that it hasn't
been printed when it was built, and those are the things that you want to look for and
expect to pay more.
If you're spending $10 on a tie, you can pretty much be sure that this is a cheap tie, nothing
wrong with those types of ties if you're a man just starting out and it's a very classic,
conservative tie and it looks very good. It will get you through. I mean, if you just
graduated from college or you're in college, this may be the way to go, but ties are one
of those things that if you can identify quality, you can oftentimes find some great deals out
there.
Okay, so getting back to quality, but before I get into the hand and I talk about some
specific build details, let's talk about two things which you should be able to look on
the specs and you want to make sure you get the right tie for you because if you're tall,
if you're short, you want to be looking for a type of tie which is going to suit your
body.
Let's say you're under 5'6". You want to be looking at ties and the average tie length
is going to be approximately 58 inches, 57 to 58 inches. You preferably don't want anything
bigger than that because once you start getting with a tie that's too large, not only is it
going to be off in terms of length, but you're going to try to have to find knots which are
just going to work for it, and you just don't want to have an extra -- I mean, there are
ways around it.
You could actually cut the end of the tie and have it sewn off. You can also tuck it
in, find places to tuck it in to your pants or your shirt, but it's just an extra hassle
and it's going to be better and look more proportional if you find a tie which is 57
to 58 inches or smaller.
A great resource is eBay in vintage ties. A lot of men don't even think about this,
but older ties were made shorter. They were usually made a bit smaller. So if you can
find a vintage tie, go into a thrift store, look at some of the older ties. Look for the
ones that are a bit shorter. Lay them out. But if you can find something in the 55-inch
to 56-inch range, it's going to probably serve you well.
Another option is looking at ties in countries were shorter men are more predominant, so
Japan, Italy, those places where the average height is more like 5'7", 5'8", 5'6" versus
the 5'9" to 5'10" that we see here in the United States. That's going to be a great
option as well.
For the taller men, there are many tie places and in fact, I'll link you to one down below,
ties-necktie.com. My friend, Hendrik Pohl, runs this place and they actually have an
entire section for taller men and you want to make sure to get a longer tie because otherwise,
you're going to be having to get creative. If you have a 57-inch tie and you're 6'5",
then you're going to find that when you go to tie that, it is just always going to be
too short.
A lot of guys get around this because they end up tying very simple knots up here. I've
got a Half Windsor today, but a lot of gentlemen, they wouldn’t be able to pull this off because
it has an extra loop around there and it just takes away an inch, and it's something that
they can't afford whenever they have a short tie for their body type, so look for longer
ties. You're going to see these in the ranges of around probably 62 to 64 inches, so quite
a bit of extra room to play with, and that goes a long way when you're trying to get
the right knot and you want it to look proportional. Okay, so that's the first thing we talked
about, is to make sure the tie is the right length.
The other one is going to be to make sure the tie is the right width. And when I'm talking
about width, and I'm going to use this tie right here as an example from Charles Alexander,
another company I'm a proud supporter of. Charles Alexander, this is one of his thinner
ties and it's hard to tell right here from the camera, but there's a little trick that
I like to do. By the way, you're looking for about 3 ¼ to 3 ½ inches. That is perfect.
That is average. Anything that goes closer to four inches or starts to fall below three
inches is either a wide or a skinny tie.
Wide ties go back to the 1970s and 1960s. I don't really recommend them unless you are
a large man. If you're a thin man, then you could go for a thinner tie. Now, if you're
also kind of chasing the winds of fashion, you could go with the thinner tie as well,
but I think these thinner ties look better on thinner, smaller, petite men.
So a couple of things you want to match up. This is a one dollar bill. You'll find these
hopefully throughout your wallet. I know even throughout the world, you guys -- just a side
story, but I know a lot of Ukrainians and Russians, they don't put money in banks; they
put money in dollars. A side note, you can look it up.
An interesting note about the dollar bill is that it's six inches in length, not exactly
but close enough for these purposes. So fold it in half and you've got about three inches.
I can hold a dollar bill up and I can see right here that this is just under three inches,
so I know that this is a skinny tie, a thin tie, probably not something I would wear,
but for a smaller man, a more petite man, or a man who perhaps has a jacket with thin
lapels.
That's another quick little tip there, is if you actually have a jacket with thin lapels,
you'll probably want to match up the tie with the lapels so I can measure these right here
and I can see that mine are just at about there inches. So I'd be still wearing this
tie, but I'm not going to.
Now, here's a tie that I had made for me by a friend. This one is going to be a bit wider
and we can put this here and I can see, wow, this goes over quite a bit. This is easily
just under four inches, probably three and three quarters. This right here is on the
edge of being a wide tie. I will take one of Charles Alexander's ties. Again, this one
is the perfect length. This is about 3 ¼, 3 ½ perfect right there. I can see that this
is a good width and this is one of my favorite ties actually.
We've talked about the width. We've talked about the length. Now, let's talk about tie
construction. Again, you can feel the tie and just those ties I felt right there, there
was a huge difference in the weight, in the build. I could just feel it. I could see it,
but you're going to want to look at the details. So the easiest way again is to trust the merchant,
but if you're dealing with someone you've never dealt with before, then you want to
turn the tie over and look at all of the details.
Now, this pink one that I pulled off and I showed you earlier is not actually the highest
quality tie, so I'm going to use this one as little things that I see that are missing.
One of them is going to be the bar tack, so the bar tack usually is here on the back of
the tie and it's a little stitch that you'll see that holds it together. This one is missing
the bar tack because they just sewed it right down and that's a small indicator that it's
not the highest quality tie.
I turn this Charles Alexander over and we've got the stitch right here, so that's a nice
little bar tack right there. Another thing on this tie is I can see it was made in England
and I don't mean to be a snob as to something made in some country is better. There's great
stuff coming out of China. There's great stuff coming out of Japan. There's great stuff coming
out of Italy, but usually Italy and the UK pretty much dominated when it comes to high
quality ties. You'll also find stuff coming out of the New York Garment District that's
really good quality and there are people that hand-make ties in Minnesota and they're good
quality, but rule of thumb, if you see it coming out of Italy, if you see it coming
out with a "Made in England" stamp, it's a good sign of quality.
The other one is going to be the lining and the lining is opening up the tie and looking
inside, and looking at the stitching, just getting a feel of how it's put together. This
one, I can tell you, is just elegant. You look at it, it's very clean. They've got a
little bit of embroidery there for Charles Alexander, just very nice.
I'm not going to see that same level of quality on this lower quality tie. In fact, this one
is really lightweight, really loose. Usually, quality ties -- well, this isn't always an
indicator of quality, but oftentimes, a quality hand-made tie will also be heavier built.
This one's really lightweight. I can actually hold it up to the light and almost see some
of the folds over. Again, it's a fine tie, but it's not a high-quality tie. And when
I try to open this up and look at the lining, I can see that there is no lining, that it's
just folded over on itself.
All right, so at this point, the last quality detail that you want to look for on a tie
is going to be triple construction. Triple construction, you're going to have to flip
the tie over and we're going to be going up the back of the tie and we're looking for
a line, which shows that -- basically, ties are either made usually in two or three parts.
If they're made in three parts, it's actually a higher quality tie because it shows that
the tie maker paid attention and he wanted to make sure that it -- because he knows that
this area right here is going to be folded over and twisted up. And so, he wants to give
it a little bit more give and the triple construction just usually creates a little bit better of
a knot than the double construction.
So as I'm going through -- and I can tell this is triple construction because I see
the lines right here. You'll see usually two of them right here. And then I've got lines
going in the opposite direction right up here. All right, right up here going like this,
so that right there is the last detail. There are a few others and I know that there are
probably some tie makers watching this and they're like, "Hey, you didn’t point out
this and this." Okay, this is a general overview, guys, but if you can look at those and if
you can find those things, you can be rest assured that you've got a good quality tie.
But at the end of the day, it's about trust.
I link you to a number -- well, actually, two merchants who I trust, who I've done business
with for years, and I know their quality is good for the price that they're charging,
and one of them is going to be lower end, one of them is going to be higher end, both
of them good quality ties, good value for what you get.
All right. This has been Antonio Centeno with Real Men Real Style. I'll see you in the comments
and in the next video. Bye-bye.