So, bow ties: dressy or done?

I purchased a couple of handmade bow ties from a very nice fellow at an arts festival, and ever since I’ve been looking for an excuse to wear them. Job interview? Date? (Bwahahah!) Are they fashionable?

Bow ties are pretty cool if you can pull them off. I’ve got a buddy that has a real 1950’s sort of thing going on, he wears bow ties, and makes it work.

You don’t need to try too hard to come up with an excuse: just throw on a blazer and wear the bow tie to the theater, or a concert, or dinner, or a conference.

However, I probably would not wear one to an occasion where one is making a first impression, such as a first date or job interview. Not because bow ties are bad, but because they have a connotation (of perhaps a not wholly practical academic demeanor) that usually is not the first message one wants to send.

I wear mine on dates with The Wife, but she’s used to me by now. We have a business casual office, so no one wears any type of tie during the day.

As to whether they are fashionable, well, I wear them. So they can’t be fashionable by definition.

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They’d be a literal pain in the neck if you couldn’t. :smiley:

I think the bow tie option is accepted now, whereas 5 or 10 years ago it was a statement, at least if you weren’t of a certain age and didn’t wear them all the time. The statement was “I am effete, elitist, flighty yet stuffy. I probably also own a fountain pen.”

Totally sexy.

There is a better than 99% chance that wearing one will make you look like Pee-Wee Herman.

I own both a bow tie and a fountain pen.

If you’re white, skinny, hyperactive and wear short tight clothes.

I’ve got several of each. Come the revolution, I’ll put in a good word for you at the gulag. We can sing Gilbert & Sullivan duets while we break rocks!

Hmm, so my next investment: a vest! :slight_smile:

Careful consideration required. Those of us into our difficult middle years may look like the opposite of Pee Wee in vests. A good off-the-rack article has a distinct, and unforgiving, hourglass shape, in keeping with its history as a kind of masculine corset.

Hmmm. I’m female, straight, 32, and live in central Illinois (i. e., Not Chicago). While you might spot one here at a wine bar on New Year’s Eve, it would still make you look either (a) like you’re trying too hard or (b) gay. I wouldn’t hit on a guy in a bowtie. Either way, I don’t want to try that hard.

I wear a bow tie now. Bow ties are cool.

Done. Unless you’re wearing a tuxedo or some other costume they just look silly.

I prefer to think I cut a prosperous figure, like President Theodore Roosevelt.

Go for it dude. I hate the midwest mancode: all men must dress the same or you’re gay! If you can’t pull it off wear a Packers jersey or something equally insecure :wink:

Only if they’re not done up into a bow.

Beaten to the punch. Ah, well. Allons-y!

As a midwesterner, I feel I must speak up for my people. We don’t believe you’re gay if you don’t dress like a man, but only gays will associate with you.

And we do have our basic tolerance. If a man wants to dress in drag, we’ll understand and reserve judgment. But if a man wants to dress piss elegant, we have nothing but contempt for him.

Bow ties are so common in the South that I don’t even particularly notice them.