One of the more difficult – and essential – fashion choices. How do you match a tie to your shirt? Jeff Banks is a master of colour coordination and creates the ideal fusion of texture, pattern and style.
One of the questions I get asked most about, is ‘how do I choose a tie to go with my shirt or suit?’. Common question – sounds easy!
Men angst over that more than anything else, so, here are a few simple tips…
The first thing is, you have to look at the colouration that is in the shirt.
So, if it’s got blue in it – blue tie; if it’s got purple in it – purple tie; if it’s got yellow in it – yellow tie.
Those are the simple rules, so – you have to look closely at the fabric of the shirt. For example, this first shirt has got a blue print in it, so if I take a tie that’s principally blue and I put that tie with that shirt, it’s going to work well and coordinate.
The next one is what I call a Jerba stripe, and this has got pink, lilac, teal, white – quite a mixture of colours in there. So you need to zero in on one colour: I’m going for the lilac shade and I’m going to look at that and think ‘ if I choose a tie which has got lilac in it, then that’s going to work well with this particular stripe’.
By coincidence, this has got a little bit of teal blue in it as well, so it’s absolutely perfect.
This jacquard shirt has a dark purple and white, so this is a real Autumn shirt. When I look at the dark purple, I think ‘that’s the colour I need to concentrate on’, so here, I’ve chosen a tie which is principally a very dark purple, and that fits in really well with this shirt.
Now, when you get to a white shirt, literally, it’s a neutral; you can wear anything with it. But it is an opportunity to wear very bold colourations – I always think things like school stripe, or a military stripe look great with a white shirt. So, I’ve chosen this one. This would be great for the races or something like that, to have a very bold yellow striped tie with a white shirt – and again – the stripe I’ve chosen has a bit of white in it, so it coordinates with the shirt.
Next up, I’ve got a magenta and white stripe shirt, again with a white collar; it’s one of my bar collar shirts, this is very modern at the moment. It’s principally a magenta colour, so I’ve gone for a magenta tie, but this one has a little bit of white in it, so it coordinates with the white stripe in the shirt – and when I look closely at this shirt, there’s a blue line either side of the magenta, so I’ve gone for a tie that’s also got a little bit of blue in it, too.
So, the eye registers all this stuff, and this looks absolutely perfect – because the ingredients in colouring here are the same as in the shirt.
