I’ve had this post in mind for years.  Well, maybe not years, but certainly for months or days.  I was finally motivated to act (or write) by being scooped by none other than that liberal rag, The New York Times.  A presumably professional journalist named Richard Thompson Ford published on Feb. 10, 2017, an article entitled “The Ties That Blind.”  I know you’ll agree with me that this is a really weak title…and beyond that, his piece was shot through with mistakes.  He starts out by saying that Trump cannot tie a necktie properly.  Hah!  Now I’m certainly not a Trumpy, but I know a well-tied four-in-hand when I see one. And then, said journalist goes on to criticize the length of Trump’s tie, falling as it does well below the belt line.  What a crock!  As you will soon see, that is exactly where Trump’s tie should terminate…at his crotch.

First, let me give you my bona fides with respect to neck wear and sartorial matters.  As a young buck, I was the chief, in fact, the only, tie buyer for the dry goods store in my college town.  I remember vividly my first foray into the Dallas Apparel Mart with the explicit mission of of buying the season’s supply of ties, shirt and socks.  I can only be glad that I didn’t have to eat what I bought and then couldn’t sell.  After college, my first job was with a large downtown department store as an assistant-manager-in-training in the Menswear division…which, of course, included responsibility for the tie department.  Let me tell you, I’ve been really deep in ties for a long, long time.  If you add to this the fact that I’ve always been “tie challenged,” you will understand why I have empathy for Trump’s Tie Dilemma.  My own tie challenge arises from the fact that I am perhaps the world’s tallest sitting man.  The length of my torso and my legs are disproportionate in the extreme.  At 6’1″, I have the sitting profile of an NBA player, but, unfortunately, my legs are those of one barely rising to 5’6″.  I learned early in manhood to deal with this bodily distortion, except, that is, with respect to how to tie the perfect necktie.

A few basics on men’s neckties are in order.  Your average men’s tie is 57 inches in length, with a “long” stretching to 60 inches. The problem, of course, is that virtually no men’s store ever has any long ties.  I’m not going to get into tie fabrics because, well, it’s just too complicated.  For example, can you tell me exactly what a “silk rep” tie is?  No, I thought so.  I can’t either.  Same for color.  Let’s talk about knots.  That’s where the NYT guy went astray.  Did you know that according to some Swedish pundit in Stockholm there are 177,147 ways to tie a man’s necktie?  I don’t know how he figured this out, but like so many other things involving big numbers, there’s no way to prove them wrong.  A pair of Cambridge mathematicians determined there were 85 ways to tie a tie.  I think even they are stretching it a bit, but, who knows, they may be including string ties and bolos for all I know.  I dug through some old books on men’s ettiquette and found one that said there were only 18 traditional tie knots.  Not bad, but, and you need to listen to me on this… there are really only 4 knots (3 if you exclude the bow tie) that your normal man needs to know to be in the first rank of tie tiers.  There is the aforementioned four-in-hand, half Windsor and whole Windsor.  Most guys get the four-in-hand confused with the half Windsor, so you really only have to worry about 2.  The half and full Windsors.  I’m a half Windsor man myself, due in large part to the fact that a whole Windsor takes up so much tie fabric that the resulting end point only hits about my breast bone.  Not good! (as Trump would tweet).

Let me digress for a moment to the dreaded bow tie. I say dreaded, because there are only 3 or 4 people in any decent-sized metropolitan area that know how to tie a classic bow.  Everyone else uses the clip-on.  A case in point…years ago I was hosting a black tie business event at a toney London hotel.  I thought I had packed carefully to include the newest version of a dress bow tie – it looked like the real thing, but actually buttoned on in back.  Alas, I found minutes before the start of the event that I had, in reality, packed a “real” black bow tie, which defied being tied by me or anyone else that I could call on in that moment.  My options were limited…go without a tie, use a normal tie with half Windsor knot, or run for cover.  I opened the door to my hotel room and saw a room service waiter, wearing a black clip-on bow tie, delivering food to the room next to mine.  A few quick, pleading words and 20 quid later, I had my tie.

So back to the Trump Tie Dilemma.  I know why he wears his ties so long, and no, it’s not because he wants the end to point towards his, um, you know what.  It’s simple. Trump is a big man, and looks to be getting bigger as the days of his presidency wear on and the calories add up.  His waist line is expanding at an expanding rate.  His sartorial choices are becoming more limited.  I learned long ago as I raced past the 36-inch waistline of my middle age, to always remember to use the concept of verticallity.  Nothing horizontal ever.  Surely you’ve seen a guy that’s on the wrong side of too many cheeseburgers, wearing a garish polo shirt with broad horizontal stripes… What does he look like?  You got it.  He looks like the Pillsbury Doughboy gone to seed. No way.  But Trump does it right.  He wears a long, and I mean extra long, tie to emphasize his verticallity. He makes himself look taller and slimmer with a $500.00 custom made tie.  You got to admit, it beats liposuction.

To quote my favorite political analyst, P.J. O’Rourke, “Trump is 6’3″ and wears a Windsor (it’s really a four-in hand) knot.  How does he get the tip of his tie to go where no tie has ever gone before, hanging midway between his nuts and his knees?”   O’Rourke answers that he does it on purpose.  He works at it.  And it works for him.

There has been a scurrilous photo circulating on the internet showing the wind blowing Trump’s tie to the point where one can clearly see the patch of scotch tape holding the two ends of his tie together.  Some have poked fun at him for using such an artifice.  Not me, I’m only glad that he’s not using a  more than tacky tie tack.

So for those of us of a certain age and shape, long ties are in.  Trump included.