Catching up

I've finally run out of steam. Here's the tie I wore on May 20, by Modules of Japan, one of the best of the art deco revival labels. There might be one more photo on the camera.

Products for your happy enjoyment

From a few feet away this looks like a tie with an abstract woven pattern in rather bright colors, but if you look closer you will see that the little red rectangles actually say "Toshiba," and every other diagonal band contains a repeating line drawing of a different Toshiba product. They've even labeled each one: starting at the top and working down, we have cinema T.V., battery, car radio, cordless [telephone], "fst" [flat screen television], cell phone, and VCR. Corporate ties are usually very dull, so I applaud Toshiba for commissioning one (from Vinuchi) that's so lively and distinctive, if not actually attractive.

Still pampered

It's been almost a month since I last wore a tie, and a year and a half since I wore one of my treasured Pamper Him ties from Chicago. This is the third one to appear on the blog, which leaves me with three yet to be blogged, I believe. That could take another couple years, at this rate. Pamper Him seems to have vanished, as have most of the fabrics from Exotic Silks from which they made their ties (but this one is still there). Only the ties remain, and darn few of those, I suspect.

Fortunately I have popped back onto the blog in time to learn about Catherine Gutsche's upcoming show at the Mississippi Valley Textile Museum in Almonte, Ontario. Faithful readers (both of you) will recognize Catherine as the artist who turned my wedding tie into a painting, which now hangs in its place of honor over our marital bed. The show runs May 14 through August 2 (2008, in case you're reading this in the future), with an opening reception on Saturday, May 24. If you're in the area, go see!

Spring has sprung

Ithaca residents were assured today that spring is finally here, because I wore my rainbow-striped shirt with a rainbow-spattered tie. (The fact that snow is forecast for the weekend in spite of my sartorial proclamation is concerning; have my neckties lost their magickal qualities through neglect?) While most of my "crayon vomit" ties are roughly 35 years old and made of polyester, this is a silk tie by "A. Taghi" of more recent vintage. The only thing I can think of to say about it is, "Whoa."

Kimono my house

It finally warmed up here in Ithaca, so I tried my hand at tie-wearing again. My tie for Monday, March 31, is a patchwork tie of vintage kimono silks by T. Carney, made in Korea. The dark band next to the bottom has a very fine batik-style resist print on it; the triangle on the right side (my left), as well as the band just under the knot, are particularly lustrous, in a nubby weave that is sheer joy to look at and touch. The whole tie is quite tactile, for that matter. I wouldn't mind wearing full garments made from silk like this.

Graphic

I took advantage of the unseasonably warm weather on Monday (60 degrees, 50 higher than last week) to wear my first tie 0f 2008. A tie that looks like a graph (or several graphs) is about as graphic as you can get, wouldn't you say? This bold silk tie with rectangular jacquard weave is of unknown provenance, but is probably 30 to 40 years old and has seen a lot of use. It even appears to have been bitten at least once.

While my tie wearing, and thus tie blogging, has tapered off considerably over the last year, Mike Segers at Knot a Blog continues apace. This month will see his five hundredth blogged tie, so be sure not to miss that! In fact, I recommend you review ties number 1 through 499 in preparation for the big 5-0-0.

One last tie for 2007

Yesterday was the office holiday luncheon; readers of this blog will not be surprised by the pants in the picture at right, because they know that that's when I perform my annual Wearing of the Bright Red Levi's Cords. The accompanying tie is the last of my polyester Christian Dior Monsieurs with the CD logo in an oval near the bottom. That particular line is hard to match in terms of imaginative patterns and vibrant color combinations. Not impossible, though, so when it warms up (April? May?) I'll return with another batch of ties. Maybe. Happy holidays and best wishes for 2008! I'll leave you with a new take on a classic Christmas song from my music blog:

04 - Do You Hear What I Hear from http://burlveneer.vox.com/

Jimmy Pike

Monday's tie was another Jimmy Pike creation from Desert Designs of Australia.

Another Halloween

There is no way I could top last year's Halloween tie (there's no topping a Pucci), so I didn't try to. This year, as usual, I went with Halloween colors rather than Halloween content. This Oleg Cassini tie started out wide, I think, and at some point was surgically altered to create a more modest silhouette. The design is wonderfully 70s: clouds, colored with silver-to-burnt-orange (and back to white) gradient stripes. (I can visualize it enlarged to wall size and placed on a white background to accent a dining room or den, with shag carpet in shades of orange and brown.) And the fabric? Polyester, of course, as indestructible as clouds are ephemeral.

Special Saturday Edition

Not only is today's entry on a Saturday tie, it has two ties! I took my son Pierce to his friend's bar mitzvah today, and we both wore ties. I wore the one on the left, a black Format tie of luxurious crinkled silk with woven red and gold pattern. Pierce, making his modeling debut on the tie blog (pause for applause), wore the tie on the right, a Save the Children tie called "Schwiggles," designed by Shantai, age 8. Does he look just like me, or what?

We each were handed a program and prayer book for the ceremony. Pierce was a bit befuddled by the book, not knowing that it starts at the "back" and goes in the opposite direction of a standard English book. As he sat there struggling with it, I whispered to him "Manga style," and he got it instantly. A piece of knowledge of one foreign culture helped him grasp another one in no time; I couldn't have planned a better demonstration of the importance of knowledge and understanding.

Peek-a-boo

Here's a favorite theme of mine: a design underneath, in this case stripes in shades from white to orange to brown, covered with another pattern (plain brown here) that is then peeled away strategically to create yet another pattern. Well, not really peeled away, it's all woven of a piece, but that's the effect. The different stripes and layers have contrasting weave patterns as well, adding one more design dimension. This is a vintage German offering from Juka's Spitzenklasse line, made of "Dralon, 100% Polyacril." It will outlast us all.

Missoni Impossible

Though this tie is from Biella, I could almost swear I've seen the same pattern on a Missoni tie. I inadvertently robbed it of its color impact by wearing it with a shirt that matched the dominant color; if I had it to do over again I would wear it with an off-white, or ecru, or eggshell, or pale yellow shirt. But I don't, I've worn it once and that's that. C'est la vie.

Eros

Nope, nothing smutty: Eros is the maker of the tie, as proclaimed on the very classy label, which also tells us "London Paris New York." This is a vintage tie of 100% wool, and at four and half inches wide it's a lot of wool, and it is heavy. Leslie named their superwide tie the Bellywarmer; Eros should have named this line the Millstone. I got it in the same ebay lot as my birthday tie; that must have been one groovy guy who owned both of them. There was a third one, too, and maybe I will remember which one it was.

Corduroy weather

Ah, it has cooled off enough to break out the corduroys, which for me marks the official start of autumn. Today's tie is from my favorite line of polyester neckties, Christian Dior Monsieur (previous entries here). The ribbons in the pleasantly busy pattern are disturbingly sinuous (as in, like sinews), and the flesh and blood color scheme doesn't help matters. If I keep my mouth shut maybe no one will notice.

Mid-Century Modern

With our so-called "Mid-Century Modern" home, gradually getting filled with Mid-Century Modern furniture and decor, it is only appropriate that I have some Mid-Century Modern ties as well. I don't think this one dates back that far, but the design fits comfortably with other textiles of that era. The label says "Nino Orsini," but this tie is obviously a home-made job, with the fabric behind the tip finished using the "scrunch it all up and then iron it flat" method. But who cares about the back of a tie?

And now I must be off to Syracuse to see the Chicago Afrobeat Project at Funk'n'Waffles!

Is it loud enough for you?

I said, is it loud enough for you?! This narrow tie of intensely-colored barkcloth comes from Virgin Island Ties, probably of 1960s vintage. I wore it in honor of the Dalai Lama speaking at Cornell today. Well, actually, I did wear the tie today, and the Dalai Lama did speak at Cornell today, but the two events are unrelated. However, the tie is just as colorful as the Wheel of Life sand mandala that the Namgyal monks constructed at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum in honor of the Dalai Lama's arrival.

Happy Birthday to Me

Another year, another birthday, yippee! As of today I am twice the legal drinking age, which means from here on out I will have been drinking legally for most of my life. So I will use this milestone to list some of my favorite beers: Unibroue Belgian-style ales, especially Trois Pistoles (which I drank with my birthday dinner); Weyerbacher Quad; Pork Slap Pale Ale and Snapperhead IPA from Butternuts Beer and Ale; Ommegang Abbey Ale; and Ithaca Beer Company's Double IPA. Some favorites from our trip to England in August are Inniss & Gunn Oak Aged Beer, Badger Golden Champion, Robinson's Old Tom Ale, and Sharp's Chalky's Bite. I recommend seeking them out from your local beverage emporium and enjoying them in moderation, preferably while wearing a big, bold vintage tie like this one, "made in England for Bloomingdale's" with the thickest lining fabric ever made, I do believe.

Clifford Possum

Desert Designs is best known for reproducing the works of Australian Aboriginal artists Jimmy Pike and Doris Gingingara on neckties, but I have turned up a third one. Today's tie features a design by Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri (c.1932-2002), one of the founders of the modern Aboriginal art movement. Susan Allan provides some background on his introduction to painting in an obituary on the World Socialist Web Site:

In the late 1950s he was employed, along with his older brother Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri and other Aborigines, to assist in the construction of Papunya settlement. This was the last Aboriginal settlement built under the Menzies Liberal government’s racist assimilation policy. According to the government, Aborigines were not ready to live as “white Australians” and had to be re-educated. This meant removing them from tribal lands and herding them into settlements.

In 1971, Geoffrey Bardon, a young teacher, arrived at Papunya. Bardon, who later described the settlement as “an unsewered, undrained, garbage-strewn death camp in all but name,” won the respect of the older men and encouraged them to paint their ancestral stories. In contrast to Namatjira’s realistic watercolours, Bardon supplied them acrylic paint and discouraged references to Western images. This approach help give birth to the unique Papunya Tula style, which is an abstract representation of tribal myths and legends that is derived from traditional ceremonial designs.

Tjapaltjarri's art gained enormous popularity and he was ultimately awarded the Order of Australia.

Jimmy Pike

It's perfect tie weather now, around 60 degrees (F) for my walk to work. Today I dipped into my stash of Australian Desert Designs ties for this Jimmy Pike design on the coveted "crab weave" silk.

I heard you missed me

Well, I'm back! For today, at least. The weather is getting temperate enough that I can wear a tie and walk to work (1.6 miles, as it turns out) without feeling miserable by the time I arrive, so I jumped back in today with a Verner Panton-inspired tie from IMM. Panton was what first sprang to my mind; on the other hand, a colleague took one look at me today and said, "Viva Las Vegas!" The tie does indeed have the shapes of poker chips and the colors of playing cards, so I think he called this one better than I did. (Please pardon the quality of the picture, I am still adjusting to a new camera that takes huge pictures, and new photo editing software (GIMP) that is not the same as what I am used to.)

Over on the music blog: Zillatron, Flight of the Conchords, Simon Shaheen, and more.