How to Put on a Tie
You have an important meeting with your boss coming up in two hours. And of course, wearing a necktie obviously makes a good impression. I don't know what it is about this little strip of garment in male clothing, that pretty much chokes you, that the bosses and customers love to see! But people like seeing it, and to make them happy, you have to wear that tie all right. And the worst part in wearing the necktie is that it is not only really difficult to learn, but if it is not done well, it looks terrible and really shabby.
Putting on a Neck Tie
The first thing you need to check for is if you have a tie which goes with your shirt. Color combinations in apparel are important anyway and more so when it comes to formal clothing. So you don't want to wear a shirt, pants and a tie which just don't go together which will make it a fashion disaster! So make sure you have a tie which goes with your shirt. Otherwise the whole exercise will go kaput!
Let me tell you that this is going to take some really tough bit of explanations. As you can clearly see, a tie has two ends. One end is broader and the other end is thinner.
Step 1: The First Knot
Flip up the collar of your shirt and wrap your tie around it. Make sure that the broad end of the tie is longer than the thin end, in fact, almost double the thin end. Now cross the broad end over the thin end and make the first knot by pulling the broad end under and over the thin end, through the loop between the collar and the tie.
Step 2: The Second Knot
Now take the broad end and wrap it across the knot, keeping two fingers inserted between the broad end and the knot. Wrap it all the way across the knot and then insert it into the loop between which you had kept your fingers. Pull it down tight and slightly pull the other two ends of the tie to make sure that the tie looks like a perfect triangle.
Step 3: Push it Up
Now button up your top button, hold the thin end of the tie in one hand and push the triangular knot up with the other hand. Flip your collar down.
Step 4: Achieving Perfection
Ideally, the tie knot should be perfectly triangular and perfectly fitting in between the edges of your shirt collar. Quite often you find the knot to be too thin, in which case you might need to get the tie altered and made shorter. The second part of the perfect tie is that the bottom end of it should be just around the trouser's belt-level. Now the length of the tie of course will take some time to perfect, so I used to hitch my pants a bit higher or lower to achieve the perfect length!
Step 5: The Bells and Whistles
You can also accentuate the look of your tie and make yourself look more important using a tie pin or a clip. The tie pin is that shiny little thing you see on the tie. It consists of a chain and the pin. The chain goes inside the button-hole of the shirt. The long end stays on the inside of the shirt, while the end with the whole is on the outside. The chain helps hold the pin down. The pin is then inserted into the hole at the end of the chain. Make sure that the pin is sufficiently high. Ideally it should be about an inch above your belly button.
The second little embellishment we men love to make to our ties is the tie clip. Simpler to put on and quite fancy. Open the clip by pressing its ends together, slip it in at around the same height where you'd put the tie pin over the tie and the shirt and snap it shut!
Yes, putting on a tie is hard work and requires patience, but one has to bear with the work. After all, it is a part and parcel of the business world.
