A Tie with a Windsor Knot

One of my great literary and movie heroes is James Bond - mainly for his daring do, cheeky wit and of course his ability to always his beat the bad guys while maintaining sartorial elegance. However, recently I read Ian Fleming's novel 'From Russia With Love' which features Bond whisking a beautiful Russian agent and the Specktor Cryptography Machine out of Turkey. The title of Chapter 25 is 'A Tie with a Windsor Knot'. At this point in the book Bond meets the Russian hit man Donovan 'Red' Grant who has been sent to kill Bond. When they first meet the description of Grant goes as such:

"The man had taken off his mackintosh. He was wearing an old reddish-brown tweed coat with his flannel trousers, a pale yellow Viyella summer shirt, and the dark blue and red zigzagged tie of the Royal Engineers. It was tied with a Windsor knot. Bond mistrusted anyone who tied his tie with a Windsor knot. It showed too much vanity. It was often the mark of a cad."
                                                                                                              Fleming, pages 272-3

As a man who almost always ties his tie with a Windsor knot as well as one who admires Bond I was put in a difficult and worrisome position. Should one of my style gurus dictate how I wear my tie or should I be true to myself and wear my tie in a way which I feel comfortable?

In the last few years as I have developed and grown my tie collection I have graduated from using the School-boy or Four-in-hand knot to the Half-Windsor knot or Windsor knot to tie my ties. I have done this because I've felt it gives me the neatest, most symmetrical knot possible to look good at work. Occasionally I have used a Victoria knot to tie my tie as well but often this knot has looked small and thin inside the wide collared shirts which I wear. Most of the shirts which I have purchased in the last five to ten years have had the wide collar. This has meant that the most suitable tie knot for the shirts I have been wearing have been best suited to the Windsor knot. When I think about this it has also meant I have more often than not chosen ties which are a little wider and I've ignored the skinnier ties that I own.

Recently though the skinny tie has been making a bit of a comeback and they are more and more available at retail stores when shopping. They've become more and more fashionable of late and I've even bitten the bullet, to stay with the current fashion, and brought a couple of them myself. But with the skinny ties there has also been more and more need for narrower collars. This led to me also purchasing this year some shirts with the narrow collar. I have avoided the button down variety as they remind me too much of being a youngster in the late 80s and early 90s where they seemed to be only available shirt where I was growing up. So I've now got narrower collars which are more suitable for the skinny ties. However, the knot which I use to tie these ties can't be a Windsor because it's too fat. That means to stick with fashion I have to develop my knot tieing skills to tie a more suitable knot to go with the narrow collar.

Is it perhaps because of the fashion of the times that James Bond disliked Donovan Grant's choice of a Windsor knot so much? I now have to expand the number of ways in which I tie my tie. In the post World War II era into which Fleming created Bond the Windsor knot had been popularised by American servicemen. As a traditional English gentleman Bond would have found the popularity of the American servicemen threatening to his own charms with the ladies. Hence his thoughts on vanity and caddish behaviour.

So where does all this leave me in choosing how I'm going to tie a tie? I think I just have to really expand the ways in which I can tie a tie. Thanks to my brother who sent me the link to Thomas Fink's website (http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~tmf20/index.shtml) which has 85 ways to tie a tie. I'm now varying the way in which I tie my tie each day dependent on the collar style I have each day.

So thanks to Bond and the 'From Russia With Love' Windsor tie quandary I've expanded my knowledge of how to tie a tie. Which now only leaves the quandary from the movie version of the book where Bond begins to suspect that Grant is on the wrong side.... should I have the red or the white burgundy with my fish?

Bibliography:
Fleming, I.; From Russia With Love, Penguin Books, Camberwell, 2010

Does a new job equal a new tie?

It's the end of the first week in my new job. I have now changed the school that I work at and I'm enjoying the challenges that a new job provides. However, it has been a good start to the school year.

Of course, as a grabatologist, my first challenge for the week was to choose a tie for the first day of the year. Do I choose a new tie or should I go with one which is tried and tested? During the school holidays I had enjoyed the opportunity to purchase a couple of new ties for the new school year and I was seriously considering wearing them. Yet in the end I felt it was good to go with one which was well worn and comfortable. That allowed me the chance to wear a new shirt with a medium width point collar and a classic Full-Windsor Knot.

Once I had made all my choices I was able to present  myself for the first day of the school year looking smart and presentable (even if I do say so myself!). The first day of the year was, as it so often is, an absolute stinker over 40 degrees Celsius. On a day like this it is announced at school that it is a 'Ties off day'. The only time the students were expected to put them on was for the class photo and at the end of the day. With each day of the week panning out as being well over 30 degrees it was constantly 'ties off' so I made the choice to continue with wearing older ties which I knew could be worn on really hot days. I felt it would be terrible to choose a tie which was brand new and then see it almost melt away on such a hot day. Even though the days were 'ties off' I was more than willing to keep my tie on throughout as it is exciting to put one on after so long away from the work place.

It made for quite an interesting first week at my new school. Lots of heat equals tie or no tie. What does it mean for next week? A new tie perhaps? Well we'll just have to wait and see how the weather looks to see what tie will be coming next week!