100 Days, 100 Ties

A funny thing happened on the way to googling the designer of the Tie du Jour. Bruno Rossi came up more prominently as an experimental physicist. According to Bruno’s Wikipedia page, he lived quite an exciting life: he won awards, he fled Italy’s fascist regime, he discovered muons and he just basically had a bitchin’ time being smart.

Buongiorno, Bruno!

Here’s where I link him to ties…I’ll throw him into the Guys With Ties bin. Check out this knitted tie! How I wish it were a color shot! The difference in grains on each stripe is molto bene…you just know ol’ Bruno had some co-ed admirers on campus–Italian accent, physics brain…per favore, signorina!

Onward, to today’s selection. As you can tell, it’s from Bruno Rossi, who seems to be more noted, though not that much more, as a purse designer, according to the BagBunch blog.

A very light gray is the backdrop for polka dots of various colors–pinks and blues. It really stood out at the Unique Thrift Store a couple of weeks ago. Yes, it wouldn’t take much to stand out over there, but it did.

Are you seeing spots?

There is a slight smudge off-camera, very hard to tell unless you’re looking for it. Which reminds me of a time-tested adage if you’re looking to start shopping around at thrift stores and resale shops. Adage schmadage: there are some things you need to do while treasure-hunting to ensure that you don’t immediately put in your own reject pile. I’ll go over one of them here; the rest I’ll cover later.

When you find something interesting, you need to tell a story to yourself. Begin that story with a simple premise: Why is this here? You can have fun with this…if it’s a shirt or pants, maybe the previous owner gained weight. Lost weight. Lost virginity. Sometimes the reason can be found. In this instance, there was the smudge. On a great pair of jeans, it may be that the zipper is broken; or perhaps a tiny hole on an otherwise immaculate dress shirt.

Obviously, sometimes the story is not obvious, and that’s where treasures are waiting to be discovered. A wardrobe could have been cleaned out by a girlfriend, or a fed-up mother who would like her 32-year old ‘little boy’ to get his own place. There is always a reason that something fun finds its way to you; just be sure to know it before you get it home.

Well, enjoy your evening. As always, thanks for reading…

Brooke

Good story with this tie, and with this day…

My little big girl turned 9 today, and I had the day off to help her celebrate a full day of being spoiled. She and Diane are leaving in a few hours for Costa Rica (a little mommy-daughter spring break trip), which will be the topper of the birthday celebrations.

We went to dinner at N9ne Steakhouse, which fits in with the 9 theme of the day, but it’s a bit fancier than Chuck E. Cheese or American Girl Place. Quite a bit. Our tradition is that the birthday celebratee gets to pick the site of the family dinner. Steven picked N9ne for his 19th birthday, and family legend recalls that he ordered all of the items on the dessert menu by calling out, “One of each!” and twirling his finger in the air, a la John Candy’s Orange Whip order in Blues Brothers.

The food was superb, the desserts imaginative and Kelly, our server, was infinitely patient with our eclectic table of 10. And, yes, Julia ordered the entire dessert menu…”One of each!” And they all came with a candle, and the restaurant serenaded her.

Oak Hall, for Ladies & Gentlemen...

So, yes, this is a fashion blog (that may be a stretch), not a culinary one; so before dinner, I let Julia pick my tie and she selected this black tie, with olive, red and yellow adornment, from Gitman Bros. Kind of interesting, in that I don’t wear it much anymore, but there’s a story with it. I’m actually surprised I still know where I got this…even know who sold it to me.

When I was about to graduate from college, I needed some interview suits, and hopefully those suits would turn into they-actually-hired-you-so-now-you-need-to-go-to-work-not-looking-like-a-schlub suits. So, I went to see one of my brother’s best friends, Anthony Dionne, who worked at Oak Hall in Memphis. He sold me a couple of suits (one of which, a dark olive, went perfectly with this tie) and two or three ties, and this one is the last remnant of that very sale. Way to go, ‘Toine…you sold me a good one. At least it will be viewed 18 years later by, if I’m lucky, 18 people.

That’s a great thing about ties. As long as they’re classically designed, colored and styled, they can come and go within a wardrobe for years. I have seen some awful ties at resale shops that I can hardly see how or when they were in style. But, I keep my eyes open for ones in basic colors that still catch the eye with a timeless quality that demonstrates that the designer knew what he or she was doing. I’m sure some of you will deem some of my ties too ugly for blog content, but I am pretty confident that I have very few F-uglies on my tie rack.

Enjoy the end of March. Happy Birthday, my beautiful Julia.

Thanks for reading…Brooke

So, I speak French relatively fluently (wine-aided), and I would love to learn Spanish and then Italian.  And, yet, here we go with a German lesson? Hundred days, hundred ties, jawohl!

The label shows their tag line (I guess): Mit Der Schwarzen Rose (with the black rose). Creative bit of German marketing, calling to mind a burnt flower, not to mention the Rolling Stones song, Dead Flowers:

Send me dead flowers to my wedding,
And I won’t forget to put roses on your grave.

Schöne Krawatte (good-looking tie)

Well, jumping from the lovely sentiment from Mick & Keith, today we have a tie from Diolen Star Krawatte that I just love. This one will be hard to avoid wearing over the next 90 tie-wearing days.  That’s right! This is Tie No. 10–cool blue edges with a great, two-tone pattern in the middle.

For the tie bar, I need to give some props to the blog The Sartorialist.  Scott Schuman writes under this nom de blog, and snaps pictures in Milan, LA, New York, Paris, etc, of people displaying a high sense of fashion during their normal walk of life.  I have enjoyed his monthly, 1-page feature in GQ for quite some time, and have recently begun following him on Twitter.

Anyway, one of his tweets led me to this entry, of a Milanese gentleman sporting a club-collared shirt. My eyes went to his tie (of course), and I realized that a tie bar could extend over the edges of the tie. Anyway, I had this sharp, blue tie clip and decided it would be okay to wear it on my thin tie today.

Next week will be hit or miss, as it’s spring break time.  I’ll be coming into work briefly for maybe three of the days, so if you check in later on in the week, I should have two or three new ties to show off.

Have a great weekend…thanks for reading. –Brooke

I have a problem. An addiction, really. To thrift stores, resale shops, what have you. I like finding new ones, and checking them out. And now, I’m sad that one here in Evanston is moving to the city.

Thriftgeek on Davis Street in Evanston is packing up the plantation next week. I stopped in yesterday to say hello, and was bummed to find out that they had not renewed their lease. Co-owner Susan Ganem is sad to go, but they just ended up on a block that was not conducive to much walkabout traffic. Here’s an Evanston Now article about Thriftgeek from last summer.

As a moving sale, the lion’s share of the items in the store are 50% off. Of course, given those prices, I had to take a look at their ties, and I found four new (to me) ones for my collection. After discovering 4 ties that I keep at work in case of forgetfulness (not likely) or soup-spillage, that brings me up to 124 ties. (I should probably also admit that, this afternoon, I dropped off some stuff at Salvation Army on Kedzie and found three more. 127. Yes, I have a problem.)

Tie No. 8...Thin is in

The Tie du Jour (Tie No. 8), purchased at that very session yesterday, brought me a nice compliment today. At a meeting with Northwestern University’s Career Services, Betsy Gill said I was “very Mad Men today.” Somehow I don’t think the gents at Sterling Cooper did their shopping at Montgomery Ward, but I thanked her immediately.

This thin, maroon number (yes, it has a Montgomery Ward tag) with gold thread decor, is fashioned (I use that term loosely here) from 50% Dacron Polyester and 50% Orlon Acrylic. Yeesh, good thing I’m not allergic to crappy synthetics.

Back to Thriftgeek…if you’re looking for fun stuff to decorate your home, office or apartment, it’s definitely worth a trip. They, like me, are very obviously into finding ‘treasures’ and passing them along to folks who’d really enjoy owning them. It’s just fun eyeing all the fun stuff in there, and it’s too bad they’re heading out. But, they won’t be far, and I will definitely make a special trip to visit them in their new digs on the 3800 block of N. Lincoln (3848 or 3858, if memory serves).

Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell & accessorize

Oh, and I also picked up this pocket square, which was probably born as a small scarf. ‘Twas made for this tie, n’est-ce pas? Thanks for reading.

Brooke

…but every tie? Not so much.

With several of my ties, there are personal histories attached, and I’m sure there are even forgotten tales that have long since been detached. In the first week it’s been easy to grab ones with a story; today I purposefully chose one without.

Something Old, Nothing New, Something Resale, Something Blue

Tie No. 7 is a brand, ISACO, that I’ve never heard of. I just liked the color, a deep royal blue, and thought it would go well with some of my shirts. I bought this at Unique Thrift Store, at Western & Howard sometime last fall. All of their ties are 99 cents, and, depending on the color of their tag, can be 25-50% off.  Good chance this tie was 50 cent (with a tie this cheap, it should definitely not be pronounced Fitty-Cent).

I sported this look today at our monthly Networking Breakfast (NeBr) event. It was amusing that several people asked about 100 Days, 100 Ties, and even more fun that a couple of folks said they’d give me a tie for the blog.

A little bit on my job, for those of you who don’t know…I’m the Manager of Membership, Marketing & Development for the Evanston Chamber of Commerce. It is truly the first job I really love. It sounds corny to say, but I have a great time every day. Each day is very different from the last, and I’m bummed to leave at 7pm (heheh, yeah right, I never stay that late). It’s the complete opposite of my tenure in the banking industry, where creativity goes to die. The soul-sucking, monotonous routine really did a number on me. I probably should have said, “No comment,” but the big banks of the world can kiss my ascot.

Great bow tie, Dr Vince

Green on green...lookin' good, DFish

Back to the NeBr…a couple of guys were wearing some cool ties, and I thought I’d add a pic or two. I’ll call it my GuysWithTies section. Armed with my trusty roving iphone camera, I’ll try to show you what’s out there…

Be sure to read tomorrow…it’ll be a clip about a really fun tie that goes with a sad, store story. And, later this week, Thursday or Friday, I may give away the Tie du Jour. Just shows what a generous fella I am.

Thanks for reading…Brooke the Generous Fella

If you thought the Little Brick Shirt House label was good, you’re going to love this one. Four words, innocuous enough when solo, creating a collective oxymoron: Full Fashioned Crochet Rayon.

In case you didn't realize fashion could be fractional. It's FULL FASHIONED!

Those words just roll off the tongue, don’t they? Well, someone at the Wembley Necktie company thought it would. It’s one thing to claim the level of fashion, another to admit that something is crocheted, much less rayon. I know they didn’t have this movie quote from ‘Animal House’–90RAYON–to help them know about rayon’s unhipness, but still…

Rayon = stay on

Anyway, this is my only knit tie, and thanks to the Wembley copywriter, we know it was crocheted out of England’s finest and most fully-fashionable rayon. It’s a great blue with grey slanted stripes, and it reminds me of my high school days. Yep, at Christian Brothers High School in Memphis, I had to wear a tie to school every day. After 4 years of such suppression by ‘The Man’ I don’t know how I came to like wearing ties by now. I’d call it a maturity thing, but those of you who know me will call out my initials.

I have to admit that, after writing this blog for only a week, I missed it over the weekend. Probably a welcome break, but I definitely thought about which ties to wear this week. All of the feedback, even from Neil the Sassy British Fashion Wizard, was very welcomed, and it is quite motivating.

Thanks for reading. Welcome to the 2nd week of 100 Days, 100 Ties.

Brooke