Make Your Ties Work with Plaid Shirts
Plaids are always fun to throw under a sport jacket, but making them pop with a tie is a somewhat daunting task. Here are your two essential tips.
Jacket, Polo Ralph Lauren; short sleeve shirt, Black Fleece; tie, Gianni Versace vintage; jeans, APC New Standard
The main rule of thumb is that any time you’re pairing a tie with a plaid, you are trying to calm down the craze of the shirt.
One can pretty easily accomplish this by pairing a plaid shirt with a dark tie.
Just make sure your tie has a little sheen to it. Wool ties can work, but they often have a distracting amount of fuzzy texture that adds one more element to the outfit moreso than it calms it all down. A little bit of sheen smooths things out and relaxes the look. That said, don’t go out and buy a shiny black silk Brioni tie and expect it to pop with your plaid. That much sheen just ends up looking cheesy when there’s so much pattern behind it. Remember, the dark color is meant to calm things, and the undistractingly mild sheen as well.
Jacket, Polo Ralph Lauren; shirt, Bergdorf Goodman; tie, Chipp vintage; jeans, APC New Standard; shoes, Common Projects
You’ll see a similar take on this at J. Crew. They tend to advertise subtle black silk ties with autumnal plaids. Matching colors can theoretically be a tad tricky, but just use your head to see what works. Most often black, navy, or gray ties work. Don’t try to do too much. And if you’re really not sure, just find a solid tie with a color that is close to a color in the plaid.
So to summarize:
1. Plaid shirt.
2. Dark solid tie (perhaps of a color in the shirt).
3. A little sheen to the tie.
4. Not too much sheen.
The next trick is our favorite trick. Stripe tie with plaid shirt.
Jacket, Orvis; shirt, Orvis; tie, Brooks Brothers vintage; jeans, APC Petit Standard; shoes, Salvatore Ferragamo; belt, vintage - no label
While adding a pattern with the tie might seem to be antithetical to our goal of keeping things calm, when done right, the stripe does exactly what we want.
The secret is that in the stripe tie, your main concern is color. One of the colors in the tie must match with one of the colors in the plaid. It is best to make that color be one of the brighter colors in ensemble and it is best if that color is expressed in the stripe of the tie. The rest of the tie should be dark — again, to calm the eyes.
It’s okay to match more than one color in the shirt to more than one color in the tie, but trust your internal barometer of matchy-matchiness. Too much is too much and it can steer toward the vain. Otherwise, that’s really all it takes. This trick magically pulls everything in the shirt together and simplifies the look, while making you appear to be the thoughtful sartorialist you are.
To reiterate:
1. Plaid shirt.
2. Stripe tie.
3. Match one color of tie to one color of shirt.
4. Works well when the color you match is a bright color that is the color of the stripe.
5. Rest of the tie dark.
6 Responses “Make Your Ties Work with Plaid Shirts ”
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This is an amazing spread on my most favorite look for men. Thank you!
Great work. Now I know what to keep my eyes peeled for when looking to extend the usefulness of my plaids.
Thanks !
Wow, good information, I have always been leery of a plaid shirt and a tie, until seeing these cool ways of doing it.
I love every single look on this post, all items are perfect. Great work on the pairing also..keep it up!
Thanks