The Minimal Necktie Wardrobe

[Frederic Leighton]

A due update, after benefitting of your kind and experienced advice on ties in genearal first, and on yellow ties more recently. Below the new acquisitions of the last 6 months, all bespoke from Drake's. I started this thread assuming that a total of 24, 18 ties and 6 bow-ties, could be a good number for a minimal neck-tie wardrobe. Having reached that number few months ago, I have been quite happy with this small selection, which seems to cover most occasions and seasons. I also started rotating them to introduce an element of fun in my dressing routine: no tie is worn again before all the others have been out (safe for the odd emergency).

[Screaminmarlon]

I really enjoyed this thread.
Thank you Federico

[Luca]

[quote="Frederic Leighton"]...I also started rotating them to introduce an element of fun in my dressing routine: no tie is worn again before all the others have been out ...[quote]

Many elegant men avoid strict rotations like the plague.
However it is a fact that creativity often stems from the presence of constraints.

I think the best thing about rotations, in the context of a fairly small wardrobe, is that it forces one to recognise when an item is surplus to requirement and/or a poor purchase.

[hectorm]

I also started rotating them to introduce an element of fun in my dressing routine: no tie is worn again before all the others have been out (safe for the odd emergency).

To make it real fun you would have to introduce another restriction besides "no tie is worn before all the others have been out". There is no challenge if you rotate your neckties in that fashion and then adjust the jackets, suits, etc. to match them. The overall results would not be much different that the other way around, only that you will have your necktie wardrobe dictating the order of the outfits (which may not coincide with the social, work, etc. requirements).
It would be more interesting if you committed to a prefix rotation of suits, jackets, shoes, etc. and then chose your neckties with the "no repeat until the end of the line" rule. In this case, the first choices of ties are easy, but the last ones -once you find yourself with only a few ties- will result in unusual (to say the least) combinations. Or you can keep that in mind from the beginning and choose a few "second best" options early on so you save also some second best (but not worst) options for the end of the tie rotation.
Don't tell me it´s not pure fun.

[Frederic Leighton]

[...] There is no challenge if you rotate your neckties in that fashion and then adjust the jackets, suits, etc. to match them. The overall results would not be much different that the other way around, only that you will have your necktie wardrobe dictating the order of the outfits (which may not coincide with the social, work, etc. requirements). [...]

Wait, this is not what I said! As a matter of fact, what you describe in the rest of your post is exactly what I already do! Indeed one rule doesn't exclude the other. I never had any problem in finding something suitable for the day.

Luca, there is no "strict rotation" here, plus many men of style deliberately adopted restrictions (there is a thread about "idiosyncrasy" in the Style subforum which has some examples of this). The order of the ties is not fixed; what happens is that over an 18-day period all of them have been worn. Most often, this is less than 18 days as I might want to get changed for the evening sometimes. Also, the rotation of the suits doesn't need to be perfectly fixed either; what matters is that all suits suitable for a certain season are worn with similar frequency. More than anything else, this little habit keeps me from buying stuff I would rarely use, which has been something I often did in the past.

[davidhuh]

Gentlemen,

I can confirm that Federico is too much of an artist to follow orders, rules and rotations in a strict manner

Cheers, David

[Frederic Leighton]

I can confirm that Federico is too much of an artist to follow orders, rules and rotations in a strict manner

Thank you, David. They used to say the same of Arnold Shoenberg, then one day he came up with dodecaphony and disappointed everyone

[hectorm]

They used to say the same of Arnold Schoenberg, then one day he came up with dodecaphony and disappointed everyone

We could call the way Federico (and some of us sometimes) chooses his neckties: serialism. We change the method of composition exploring new boundaries without falling (I hope) into atonal outfits.