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!

My Newest Ties

My newest ties were given to me for Christmas by a couple of students that I teach. I don't know how these boys figured out I liked ties. I don't seem to mention them much at school.

The first tie is from the British Museum

Let's give it some tie stats- Material: silk

Width at widest point: 9cm

Best Knot: Full Windsor

This tie is great for me as a History teacher because it is all about the Ancient Egyptian Civilisation. The student who gave me this tie figured that I didn't have one to go with this topic. So he went out and sourced this tie over the internet so that I could have a tie which would go with the topic. This was a lovely gesture because he knew that it would be so useful for me to use.

The second tie was given to me by a student who has given me a few ties this year.

Let's look at the tie stats for this one -

Material: polyester

Width at widest point: 8cm

Best Knot: probably a half-Windsor but you could get away with a schoolboy four-in-hand.

As you can see it isn't made from a fancy material and it's also a second hand tie, probably produced around the mid 1990s. Yet I have been given a number of ties by this boy over the year. He mainly gives me ties that he has pilfered from his Dad who it seems has a number of ties in his own collection  as well. However, he tells me that he does this with his Dad as he always needs to find the right tie which has a story behind it. This is because I always tell the boys that every tie has a story. Whenever I was presented with this tie by the young man I ask him straight away "Tell me the story behind this tie?". He is a clever kid and he looked me in the eye and told me that I should be able to make it up myself! "Look at the tie," he said. "It's got all sorts of different sports teams on it. You're always going on about sport and how good it is. It's got rugby and cricket and a few others. It's also a tie. So it combines the things that you like the most. That's why we thought it would be perfect for you." 

A great story from a a young man who has a bit of class and style in his own way. So even if the tie did not have a story before I really think it has a cracker now.                                                                                                                                                                                                          

My oldest tie

Where do I start? With the oldest tie that I own of course and also one of my favourites.

Let's start with some tie stats:
Material: wool
Width (at widest point): 10cm
Best knot to use: usually a Half Windsor but sometimes the Full Windsor can be used.

I love wearing this tie during the cooler winter months. It has a really chunky look because of the wool and also has that touch of old worldliness about it.

This tie was given to be my Dad, Bill. It's a tie he's had since he was a very young man. So young in fact hat he was given the tie when he first went to boarding school at the age of about 8 or 9. It was, I believe, to be his social tie for occasions when one was needed. Of course when you realise that Bill is going to be celebrating his 70th birthday in January you get an idea of exactly how old the tie is. It's been in continuous use for over 60 years now and I for one plan to keep on wearing it for as long as I possibly can.

In fact I often wear this tie to school and the kids will make comment on the tie that I have chosen to wear. I often wear this one on special occasions that remind me of my Dad or when I'm teaching something that fits in with the theme of family or connection. It becomes a great way to provoke discussion and talk to the students about their own family history.

What is grabatology?

To put it in its simplest form - grabatology is the collecting of ties.

That makes me a grabatologist.

It's something that I'm proud of and enjoy doing. I have approximately 300 ties at the moment (although I must admit that it has been a while since I counted). The ties I have collected over the years have come from many places around the world and many of them have been given to me by people.

In many respects I love the ties that have been given to me the most because they all have a story. That story is not just mine but it also belongs to the giver of the tie. It is these stories about my ties that I want to share with the world.