Pat Argenti

Pat Argenti's route to the fashion world was a strange one. His first career was as a stockbroker; then in 1980, he founded Argenti, Inc. as a wholesaler of primarily women's clothing. Argenti is not a designer; as he tells it:

“Artistic” skills, such as sketching and painting, are not necessary to accomplish design success. What is crucial is the ability to come up with the next great idea to move the business forward. An idea born from watching fashions while sitting in a Paris café turned into a $70 million dollar business.

Argenti focused on finding innovative silk fabrics and patterns throughout Asia (and especially in China) , lowering his per-unit costs by keeping the factories busy year-round, and selling the end products at lower prices than competitors. Somewhere along the way he had some of the silk made into neckties, which show up on ebay occasionally (Argenti, Inc. folded in 1991). I have never seen a dull Pat Argenti tie. They consistently sport bright colors and bold designs, ranging from regular florals through more abstract batik-style designs (e.g. today's tie) to brilliant Pucci knock-offs (and I mean that in a good way).

Pat Argenti is now the Founder/CEO of Silver Miracle, Inc., a merchandising consulting firm. There's a short video of him on this page.

Rainbow Plus

Tuesday's tie is another one from stockbroker-turned-fashion-mogul (now turned consultant) Pat Argenti; it features a baroque-style floral pattern in all eight colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, and... taupe (over the yellow). I have never seen a dull Argenti tie; I've seen some ugly ones, but they weren't boring.

We had another musical weekend: I took the kids to see The All-American Rejects at Cornell. Their brand of melodramatic pop-rock is perfect for teens and tweens (and college students too, apparently), though the lead singer's "clever bad-boy" persona is rather grating, and not clever. (He must have just learned two cuss words, which he used in every sentence between songs. Ooh, naughty!) But the kids enjoyed it, and they were thrilled to hear one of their favorite songs live ("Move Along", saved for the encore). (Q: What's the cheapest way to get an encore? A: Don't play your biggest hit during the regular set.)

But it wasn't all tedium for me: second opening act OK Go was quite enjoyable, with catchier hooks, genuine cleverness, and a kickin' ELO cover ("Dont Bring Me Down"). But the best thing about them is their dress schtick: they wear neckties!* Gnarly, vintage neckties. (Not only that, in their video for "Here It Goes Again"--one of the best low-budget videos ever, and YouTube's Most Creative Video of 2006--lead singer Damian Kulash wears red pants, just like mine!) I've ordered a CD for family listening pleasure and I hereby grant OK Go the Burl Veneer Seal of Approval.

(First opening band The Whigs might have been good; I couldn't tell from the muddy sound in the cavernous gymnasium. But they wear some old-fashioned ties on their website, so they must be all right.)

* Actually we were pretty far back, I don't know if they all wore ties for the show but Damian definitely did. That's still cool.

Klimt remixed

Wednesday's tie comes from stockbroker-turned-clothier Pat Argenti and answers the question: what if, instead of gold, Gustav Klimt's favorite colors were dark magenta, chartreuse, and aqua? Maybe he would have come up with something like this for a background pattern on one of his paintings. (Or the more likely scenario: what if a modern fabric designer wanted to create a Klimt-like pattern in dark magenta, chartreuse, and aqua?) The tie fabric is sanded silk, which I think is the most tactilely sumptuous fabric of all: the silk is put through a chemical process that leaves it with the texture of the finest suede imaginable. Another sanded-silk Argenti tie I own has fingerprint stains on it, and no wonder, it's just so delightfully touchable!

Oops

I have been remiss in posting archival tie photos while on vacation in Ithaca, primarily due to a wonky internet connection. But it's working right now, so here's a brilliant Pucci-inspired tie from Pat Argenti.