In an age when people dress for Instagram, video and television patterns are under pressure. Stripes and checks can cause flickering on video and tv, and on Instagram, which you follow on your phone, details like shirt patterns can be hard to identify. Colours work better on Instagram.
It also means that the art of combining subtle patterns is dwindling. Fortunately, some shops remind us, how we combine, for instance, a blue striped shirt and a necktie.
Blue striped shirt and blue foulard tie
Clearly, a white shirt or a solid cream or a sky blue shirt will always be default choices. Nothing changes that. Yet, a well-dressed man should also know how to use a blue striped shirt with a necktie.
In regard to patterns one rule reads that we must stick to a white blue striped shirt and a navy blue foulard tie. Keeping shirt and tie within one colour category, yet in different shades, harmonises well, when we put patterns at work. Perhaps we can add that a striped shirt call for a patterned tie. A solid navy blue necktie has a tendency to become boring with a striped blue shirt.
Blue striped shirt and pink tie
If you want to combine a blue striped shirt with a necktie in a different colour, you should try to harmonize the shades. For instance, you can wear a pink tie with your striped sky blue shirt. The shade of sky blue and pink is alike. The rule implies that a white shirt with navy blue stripes attracts a wine red tie. Navy blue and wine red have a mutual shade.
Photos: Sartorial Notes
[…] On my latest London trip I read an entertaining memoir, A Short Walk Down Fleet Street (2000) by Alan Watkins (1933-2010), renowned journalist at several papers and magazines on Fleet Street in London. In the 1980s Alan Watkins popularized the phrases “the chattering classes”, “men in suits”, and “young fogey”. […]