How to Wear and Care For Silk Ties

If you're a man and like to look smart and make an effort with your dress sense, then I'm sure that somewhere in your closet you have a handful of silk ties. A silk tie though is more than just another neck tie, it exudes luxury and demands that it should be worn properly and looked after in the correct way.

I'm not sure if there are any real rules when it comes to how you treat your silk ties, but from experience  have found that there are certain guidelines, that if followed, will see you get the best out of luxury silk ties. The first thing we shall look at is when to wear a silk tie, equally important though is how to wear silk neckties. Once your ties have been worn, you will need to know how to care for them to ensure that they last as for as long as possible, after all, they are not cheap items.

If you take a few minutes to read through my Hub, you will be fully up to speed on how to ware and care for your silk ties, and you will look fairly dapper as well.

Some people will tell you that a silk tie is best worn at certain specific occasions. Often you will hear that they are best suited (forgive the pun) worn with formal dress or worn at on a more formal occasion. You won't hear that from me though, I'm a personal believer that we all deserve as much luxury as we can get, so whether you have pink silk ties, or a black silk ties you should wear them with pride whenever you get the chance. Which leads me on nicely to....

One of my pet hates is seeing men wearing $75 extra long silk ties, with then loosened around the collar. Ahhhhhhh.....do they think they look cool? No. No. No. Men's silk ties are items of luxury, they have a certain air of class about them, they should be worn in the same way. Always, always, always keep your collar buttoned up and your tie pulled up tight, you will look smart then, you will look classy - the only exception to this 'rule' is with silk bowties when worn with a tuxedo. At a certain undetermined time in the evening it is fine to undo your bow (assuming it is not a clip-on) and let it hang like James Bond does in the movies.

OK, so we are fine now in how to wear the tie, but how do we look after it? Well, as I said before, mens bow ties are not cheap items. You can pay anything from $50 up to probably a couple of hundred or more for a designer name, so caring for them is important. The first thing you must ensure is that your hands are clean, silk is not a robust material, and it doesn't hold up well to lots of cleaning so avoiding dirt is you best defence. Also you must make sure you don't have any sharp snags on or around your finger nails, these will easily pull the silk and ruin the tie.

When you have finished wearing a silk tie, whether that's at the end of a working day or early morning after a night out, you must untie it straight away. Keep your silk ties either hung up in the closet or rolled up when you are not wearing them, and this will avoid them getting creased.

Cleaning

As I mentioned before, your best defence against having to clean one of your luxury silk ties is to avoid it getting dirty in the first place. Keep you hands clean when you handle it - especially if it is light in color like pink silk ties, black silk ties are not as bad as obviously they won't show signs of dirt as much. Avoid eating messy food when you're wearing your ties, food like spaghetti is well known to splash sauce around and this can ruin men's silk ties.

If you should happen to spill some food on your tie or get in dirty in some way, you must NOT try to clean it with water - water will kill tie, it is your enemy here. The best you can do is use some clean cotton cloth to apply pressure to the stain as soon as possible to try to absorb the stain out of the tie. If that fails and you do need liquid, again use some clean cotton cloth with some rubbing alcohol and dab the stain until it comes out. Much more than this is difficult to do with silk fabric.