Fair and balanced

Since I wore a Cornell tie to the University of Maryland before I left, it's only fair that I wear a University of Maryland tie to Cornell. This tie was presented to me by the Big Boss himself at my farewell party. It depicts the University of Maryland at College Park Master Plan (2001-2020), and the slice of campus on the front contains both buildings in which I worked: the Pocomoke Building (Building 007) and the Samuel Riggs IV Alumni Center (which, unfortunately, is located a little too high on the tie and got covered up by the knot). The tie was made by Civitas, a company which specializes in city plan ties (there had to be one); this is their first campus tie. Sales of the tie fund scholarships for the School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, and internships for campus planning, development, and preservation. Cornell's unique campus geography would also look great on a tie...

On the earphones: Ocote Soul Sounds and Adrian Quesada (super groovy), and The Best of Mandrill: hearing "Fencewalk" and the exuberant "Git It All" pounding in my ears was a transcendent musical experience, which I will be repeating on my morning walk. (It's just not the same on the home stereo.)

From the archives

Monday's tie was a Liberty of London Archival Design (and a Burl Veneer archival tie), one of their lovely classic floral patterns. There's a bird in the design, but unfortunately only its legs and tail show on the front of the tie (to the lower right of the large, gold-purple flower), so you can't really tell it's a bird at all. A wider expanse would benefit this fabric by displaying the full pattern, and I think it would indeed work as curtain or upholstery material.

On the earphones: African Head Charge, In Pursuit of Shashamane Land, in which they inject their seductive dub rhythms with some more energetic drumming, making for fantastic walking music.

Thanksgiving

For the last work day before Thanksgiving I chose a tie that resembles a Thanksgiving tablecloth, both in pattern and dimension (it's huge!). It appears to be homemade, and thus may even have been a tablecloth at one time. This Thanksgiving finds me once again with so many things to be thankful for; new this year are my lovely new home, new job, a walking commute, and a wonderful new home town. May your Thanksgiving be a happy one, and may you find occasion throughout the year to give thanks to the Being or non-being of your choice!

(On the headphones today: Isaac Hayes, Raw and Refined. Awww, yeah!)

Squarepusher

I've had the frenetic and irresistible techno-acoustic music of Squarepusher (a.k.a. Tom Jenkinson) on the headphones for the past two days, so I wore this tie in his honor. Like my last tie (nearly two weeks ago!), this is an Italian-made silk tie with no maker identification. This picture marks my stepson's first gig as Tie Blog Photographer; taking the picture was like second nature to him. Way to go!

Double paisleys

I was reminded by a reader today (my dad) that I have fallen behind in my tie blogging; quite so! Here it is November 18 and I'm just getting around to posting my tie from November 8. (However, it's the last tie I've worn; a week of rainy days made the thought of commuting on foot in a tie unappealing, so I went a whole work week without wearing a tie. I confess it felt weird.) This tie is another one of unknown lineage from the Modaitalia Store. It features a large paisley pattern in blue and green superimposed on a smaller black-and-white paisley pattern for double your paisley pleasure! The most remarkable aspect of this tie, though, is the jacquard weave of giant polka dots, which actually came through in the picture: see the one at the top near the knot.

Our exciting news is that we just got an amazing silkscreen print by Spanish artist Juan Romero:



And it's big: 29" x 32"! We just dropped it off at the frame shop today; we'll have it back in a couple weeks to go right onto our dining room wall, and I can't wait! (There are images of other Romero prints here and here.)

What the...???

From my "I Voted" sticker (my first time voting in my new home state!) you have probably deduced that this is Tuesday's tie. What are those blotches crawling across the sharp geometric background in Depression-era kitchen tones? Crabs? Lionfish? No, they're flowers, but they have evolved some pretty good camouflage. Victor Vasarely did some interesting experiments in merging foreground and background patterns. I'm not sure what the designer was going for in this tie by Firenze, but it's definitely not something you'll see very often.

First glance

At first glance this tie from Format, back when they were made in Japan, looks pretty psychedelic because of its high-contrast palette and curvilinear graphics. But the shapes don't quite have the Dionysian abandon of true psychedelia; they are more staid, and in some places recall the old-world stylizations of Pennsylvania Dutch hex signs. Still, it's a fine attempt at a different genre from a tie maker best known for its excellent swing/art deco ties.

As a fan of spy/cop show music, I am overjoyed to have just discovered Skeewiff, a DJ duo who are the best thing to happen to the genre since Stereophonic Space Sound Unlimited. They're making my walks to and from work seem positively action-packed!

Givenchy

Thursday's tie was this brash mod/op-art number from Givenchy. It has an unusual shape that I've only seen in a few other ties, which I will call "entasis" after the ancient Greek architectural practice of making columns bulge slightly in the middle to enhance their aesthetic appeal. This tie, instead of flaring out steadily to it maximum width at the bottom triangle, actually reaches its maximum width about halfway down, then tapers back a little bit before the bottom. So you get the broad expanse of fabric of a fat tie, but without the really fat part that can push a gaudy tie over the edge.

Speaking of mod/op-art, I stumbled across the wall hangings of Rex Ray yesterday. His resin-coated collages on wood panels are especially nice, but at prices of $600-$1800 I'm better off making them myself and decorating the whole house for the price of one. (No slight intended toward Mr. Ray, whose panels are doubtless of a very high quality and worth every penny.)

Today's obscure necktie reference is courtesy of eMusic, which I have decided is the best digital music vendor (because it's much cheaper than the others, you get the songs in mp3 format, and the selection is more interesting). The eMusic album of the day is Bongo Rock by the Incredible Bongo Band (1973-74), which includes the track "Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley, Your Tie's Caught In Your Zipper." Ba-dum!

Chili peppers

This Perry Ellis Handmade tie dates from the earliest days of my necktie collection, i.e. 1990 plus or minus two years. I bought it at the Syms discount warehouse in Rockville, Maryland, and it remains my best-ever Syms find and favorite paisley tie. My girlfriend at the time dubbed this my "chili peppers" tie because of the row of four chili-pepper shapes (leaves?) right in the middle (two green, two yellow) and again at the very bottom. That relationship is long over, but the tie nickname remains. Because this tie is every bit as good as a Liberty of London (in complexity of pattern, color range and balance, precision of printing, quality of fabric, and construction) I honor it by storing it with my Liberties. (See my April 26 post for more information and links on Perry Ellis.)

Pucci Halloween

Some of my ties have to months, even years before I wear them for the first time. But this Emilio Pucci tie, which I got mere weeks ago, was so suited to Halloween that it was the obvious choice for today. The "capsules" are, of course, astronaut candy corn.

I took all four kids (two demons, a zombie, and a lion) trick-or-treating last night for our first Halloween in Ithaca. (I didn't wear the tie, so as not to upstage the children.) It was a much livelier Halloween than our last few in Greenbelt: lots of kids and parents out and a high rate of neighborhood participation. It was more strenous, too; here on East Hill you can't walk anywhere without walking up and down hills. After pushing the stroller around the extended neighborhood I was exhausted. I lay down to rest after dinner, and didn't get up until morning.

This tie actually came with a provenance of sorts. The seller writes:

This tie came from an exclusive dept. store in downtown Cincinnati many years ago. The name of the store was Pogue's, which was known for selling exclusive designer clothing from as far back as the 40's. It came from an estate where most of the items were from the 40's, 50's, and early 60's, it was packed away with some other gifts given to the gentleman of the house....

And enclosed with the tie was a typewritten gift card:

DEAR WILLIE:

IF YOU WISH TO EXCHANGE THO THIS IS A REAL BEAUTY ASK FOR MR MAFFA AT POGUE. HE SHOULD RECALL ME. THEY HAVE NOT TOO MANY CUSTOMERS FOR EMILIO PUCCI TIES.

REX

So once upon a time one could get Pucci ties in Cincinnati (and thus, by extension, anywhere), though apparently few actually did. Willie very sensibly kept the tie, as will this William.

Trickle-down

The Great Shiny Woven Tie Explosion of 2004 (referenced in my October 8 entry) trickled down to the discount stores in 2005. Burlington Coat Factory had (and probably still has) a wide selection of these cheaply luxurious ties, and was the source for this Adolfo Gold grid of circles in black, blue, purple, and silver.

Hundertwasser

It's taken me nearly a week to get last Friday's tie up because I couldn't come up with the larger connection for it, but it finally hit me on the way to work. This tie from "Garber's" (presumably a menswear store) has the colors and abstract patterns of a Hundertwasser painting. Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000) was an Austrian painter, sculptor, and architect, a genius, and a true original. His passion for the environment informed all his work, which included many posters promoting conservation and awareness of environmental issues (e.g. Save the Seas, Conservation Week, Save the Whales, Save the Rain, etc.). His buildings incorporated organic forms (and organic matter) and his paintings freely mingled the living with the built, all highly stylized in vibrant, multicolored palettes. This tie (from the polyester era but surprisingly made of silk) is a mere echo of Hundertwasser's creativity, but even an echo of Hundertwasser is something special.

I've just picked up John Hodgman's funny book of fake triva, The Areas of My Expertise. Hodgman is fascinated with hoboes, and one section of the book consists of a list of 700 hobo names (all made up). The list merits a mention here because hobo name #207 is "Genius L. Cravat, the Gentleman." Two illustrations for this hobo name can be found here; all the names are listed and illustrated at e-hobo.com.

Reign of Frogs

These frogs would have had a field day at last Saturday's Insectapalooza at the Cornell University Department of Entomology. Our whole family went; after the cockroach races right at the entrance, we went upstairs to the exotic insect zoo to see live tarantulas, scorpions, whip spiders (perhaps the nastiest-looking creatures on earth), black widows, praying mantises, grasshoppers, millipedes, beetles, and many more assorted creepy-crawlies. Come to think of it, some of those creatures could probably turn the tables on a frog. We skipped the bug and worm cuisine room...

Australian Aboriginal artist Doris Gingingara designed this tie for Desert Designs. Mike over at Knot a Blog is featuring all Australian-themed ties this week, so I figured I'd hop on that bandwagon today. (Not to mention that this tie was near the top of a storage bin, a prime consideration these days.) Be sure to read to the end of Mike's October 14 entry to learn an interesting, little-known fact (i.e. not known by me) about koalas!

That Guy

I didn't want to go another full week without wearing a tie, so here's one six days after the last one. This tie is by Guy Laroche of Paris. Laroche was born in La Rochelle, France, in 1921, and opened his own couture house in Paris in 1957. Perhaps his most prominent achievement was producing the ubiquitous smell of the 1980s, Drakkar Noir for men, in 1982. (Or maybe I just think it was ubiquitous because one of my college housemates doused himself in it all the time.) Laroche died in 1989; the design house continues as a subsidiary of YGM Trading Ltd. of Hong Kong. (They seem to be between head designers, Herve Leroux having just left to start his own house.) This tie touches on two of my favorite themes, stained glass and "heavy scribbles." I'm not so crazy about the colors, but you can't always have everything in a tie.

Just one this week

I only managed to wear one tie last week, on Wednesday. This tie is from my favorite line of polyester ties, the Christian Dior Monsieur line with the oval CD logo on the front. I have previously presented one other tie from this series, and I have one or two more to bring out eventually.

In seeking out quirky music in Ithaca I discovered Inverse Room, the music project of Ithaca novelist J. Robert Lennon. The CD 100 Songs: Pieces for the Left Hand contains 99 (short) songs (I haven't found the hundredth one yet) spanning just about every genre of pop music. Relevant to this blog is the one entitled "That Tie," the lyrics of which are:

I was stakin’ out a gin joint in a rented Cadillac, when I heard a roscoe coughin’ and everything went to black. Next thing I know, Saint Peter was lookin’ me in the eye. He said, “Sorry, I can’t let you in, but where’d you get that tie?”

Maybe that tie looks like this one.

Another birthday

(Wednesday, October 4) Seems like I just had a birthday last year, and now another one arrives. I didn't have another birthday-themed tie like last year's, so I picked out this wild silk patchwork Robert Talbott Best of Class tie more or less at random. And what a lovely birthday it was: a surprise party in the office with a luscious Wegman's chocolate cake. My boss even made orange chocolate ice cream! My favorite combination of sweet flavors! Mmmmm....

At age 41 I have finally joined the iPod generation: as a birthday present I got a Samsung YP-U2J portable mp3 player, so now I can listen to music on my walks to and from work. In fact, it's made me even more attached to the brisk half-hour walk at the start and end of each workday. Unfortunately, brisk half-hour walks are not quite compatible with wearing neckties, so I'm going to cut back on the tie-wearing. That means the tie blog will no longer be daily, but occasional. I still have plenty to trot out! If you need to see more ties, please visit the other fine tie bloggers using the handy links in the right sidebar.

Finally, in case you were wondering: no, the Onion article "Man Required To Wear Tie Decides It Might As Well Be Wacky" is not about me. I prefer the wild to the wacky, and I have not actually been required to wear a tie for a few years now. But some of the observations in the "article" are a little too close for comfort!

Mr. Beene

One day in 2004 Mrs. Veneer and I took a trip out to Annapolis Mall so I could ogle the Duchamp ties at Nordstrom. The big surprise was when we went to Hecht's and found hundreds of Duchamp/Ted Baker/City of London-style ties being offered by nearly every tie label there. So I picked up a couple by Geoffrey Beene, and this is one of them. (We were even more surprised to find similar offerings at JCPenney.) These woven-patterned ties of brilliant silk thankfully found their way into the mainstream, were they remain today. Hooray!

Catching up

I had a busy week and fell behind on the blog, but here I am again. The tie for Monday, October 2, is another Exotic Silks tie from Pamper Him of Chicago. The silk satin is a real joy to handle, the shape is perfect, the knot effortless. I think there are six Pamper Him ties in my permanent collection, which I am now getting a chance to rewear, as they have not been blogged yet, and they are new to my new workplace.

Once emerged from the gray of night

Today's tie is from the Gallery Collection by Christina Desiree, and is based on Paul Klee's 1918 painting (and poem) Once Emerged from the Gray of Night. The painting itself has a gray band in the middle, which I take to represent the gray of night, and which was dropped from the necktie design. I think I would have kept it, but the tie is still special. In this one piece Klee has created not only beautiful pattern of letters and colors, but a work which ties in the sounds of the words and the meaning of the poem they assemble. Translated into English, the poem reads:

Once emerged from the gray of night,
Then heavy and precious and strong from the fire--
In the evening filled with God and bowed...

[gray band]

Ethereally now rained round with blue,
floating off over mountains' snowcaps to wise
constellations.

(And if I can find again where I found the translation, I will give credit for it; it wasn't me.) A fine testimonial to this painting's influence is the fact that it is still used as an art exercise for children.

Good Day Sunshine

It started out as a sunny day here in Ithaca, but it ended as a rainy one. My Desert Designs tie, though, was sunny all day, thanks to Jimmy Pike.