It’s always been my understanding that the knot depends on the shirt.
The knot should fill the gap between the collar. Some shirts have very narrow openings some wider. So the knot sould fill that space.
The short-sleeve-shirt-with-tie has become unfortunately associated with
(a) grocery store/ cheap shoe store clerks; and
(b) nerds/geeks (think Dilbert; think the Mission Control guys in old NASA news tapes)
L/S shirt with tie is, AFAICT, not perceived as “geeky” if done well, as it projects more of an image of a person who just hung up the jacket while he gets to work. Civilians may modify to half-rolled sleeves (not above the elbow, please!) and undone top button to project a late-hours, stop-the-presses, crisis-management aura, though it helps greatly if it IS late hours or it’s believable that you may be managing crises, as opposed to your shirt is the wrong size and you’re trying to misdirect attention.
And let’s not forget an understated charcoal or navy chalk-stripe or chalk-stripe plaid. But please, unless you’ve taken the Omerta, do not wear a pinstripe double-breasted.
As for ties, be prepared to buy a new wardrobe’s worth every year or two. Patterns, lengths, and widths change like the weather in central Oklahoma. Anyone remember the knitted square tie? How about the Regis Philbin Monochrome™? Character ties? I’ve got two Elvis, a Beatles (Fool on the Hill), Blues Brothers, King Kong, and several Looney Tunes, Disney, and Peanuts that I am loath to get rid of, but wouldn’t wear on a bet now. But I’ll hold on to them because in a few years, they’ll be back in style.
It’s tough to be a man, isn’t it, guys?
Thanks for all the responses, answers, and other assorted fashion tips.
As you can probably tell, I recently applied for/got (but may still leave - long story) the first job I ever had where I needed to wear a suit and tie. Heck, going by the “dress one step up from what you’ll wear on the job” rule, I never even had to wear a tie for job interviews until now.
All the answers were more or less what I expected, so let me explain my rationale for the SQs (or not, thank you minlokwat) goes more or less as follows. (Note: I watch a lot of TV.)
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I pretty much got used to seeing people wearing suits and ties, or, alternately, a dress shirt and slacks. Therefore I kind of started grouping jacket and tie together, to the point where seeing them separately was very slightly confusing.
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Well, that was mere curiousity. I may try out other knots, but the half-windsor (the first and only knot I learned) seems to work quite well for me. Attempting to tie Coldfire’s, OTOH, would likely end up in death by asphyxiation.
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In a similar vein to #1, I figured shirts and ties were a unit (along with the suit jacket, of course), and I wasn’t sure if ties were allowed to touch the border between the countries of shirt and pants.
- KKB, who can’t wait to get another “casual” job