Long cloth ties are today found throughout the world around men’s necks (and sometimes those of women as well). Other types of neckwear are of course worn for certain occasions (bow ties with tuxedos) or in certain regions (string or bolo ties in the American Southwest), but none matches the long tie in its ubiquity.
But, if you ask most any tie-wearing man (including me) how many different tie knots they use, the answer will be “one.” Usually that one knot is the four-in-hand, and a fair number of people are aware of the existence of another knot or two: the Windsor or half-Windsor, although these areich less commonly used.
Surely, though, there are more than three ways to tie a tie. Thomas Fink and Yong Mao, two Cambridge theoretical physicists, decided, apparently on a whim, to devote their considerable talents to discovering all the possible (an practical) tie knots. Once they realized that tie knots are “equivalent to persistant random walks on a triangular lattice” (an observation that Is evidently a rather simple leap for a pair of physicists), it was a simple matter to mathematically derive 85 different ways to tie a tie.
Fink and Mao begin their book with a short history of men’s neckwear. The earliest examples of knotted neck cloths they cite are those adorning the 7500 terracotta soldiers found in the tomb of China’s first emperor. Other early examples come from Rome in the second century A.D., but decorative men’s neck cloths seem not to have really caught on until the seventeenth century. From that point until the early twentieth century (when long ties became de rigeur) a succession of neck cloth styles developed in Europe: cravats, stocks, bow ties, Ascots, etc.
A second introductory chapter is devoted to knots and knot theory. The authors provide a basic overview of the technical aspects of knots and knot tying and of historical attempts to ennumerate and categorize knots. They then explain in detail their own theory of tie knots. They lay out both the technical limitations of tie knots (the tie must pass around the neck, and all knots must be terminated such that the two ends hang downwards) as well as the aesthetic considerations (size, shape, symmetry, and balance).
The third chapter forms the meat of the book. In it, Fink and Mao ennumerate their 85 knots, organized by the number of moves it takes to complete each one. Each knot is accompanied by a step-by-step tying diagram and notes about how it relates to other knots, when appropriate. The thirteen knits that the authors deem most aesthetically pleasing are discussed at greater length, and are illustrated with photographs of well-known men sporting them. Among this subset of knots are, of course, the familiar four-in-hand, Windsor, and half-Windsor.
The 85 Ways to Tie a Tie is a delightfully whimsical little book, quintessentially British in it’s subject matter, tone, and humor. The authors manage to explain what turns out to be a surprisingly complex problem in a way that’s pretty easy to understand. For those readers who desire a more precise explanation, Fink and Mao supply am appendix chock full of formulas and derivatives. The book contains plenty of photographs, illustrations, and diagrams, which are quite helpful in understanding the history, knot theory, and all the knot variations.
This book is less than ten years old, but it us already out of print and used copies go for fifty dollars or more. I got my hands on a copy via Interlibrary Loan. But, if you’d just like a quick overview and a list of all 85 knots with directions, Thomas Fink provides them on his web site.
