What is the real craft of hand tie

There goes a lot of craftsmanship into making the perfect necktie by hand. As with most exclusive products, it is all about the details, and it is those details that are the hardest to get right. It all starts with choosing the right fabrics, and we pride ourselves in buying almost all of our fabrics directly from the producers. Details like the taper on the blade, weight and combination of interlining fabrics, weight of the tie fabric, and tension of stitching are all decisive for the shape of your knot, the roll of your dimple and the drape of your tie. No wonder it takes many years of practice to make the perfect tie. That practice our Italian artisan tie makers have had plentiful.

Working for a small family owned business, these men and women have been making ties for most of their lives, some even for well over 40 years!As with everything in tailoring, the next important step is to get the patterns right. The tie patterns used by our tie makers have been the fruit of scrutinous development over the years, constantly honing the patterns for all the different tie constructions and sizes, and adapting them to get that perfect knot and drape. It takes the eye and touch of a master to draw the patterns on the fabric and cut them by hand using a sharp pair of scissors. The patterns are laid out and cut ‘on the bias’, which means the fabric is cut under a 45 degree angle. That is done to counter the natural tedency of the fabric to twist when worn. All parts of the tie are produced in this way, they are the three parts making up the body of the tie, also called the ‘shell’ or the ‘envelope’.

Those three parts are the blade, the narrow end (or ‘tail’) and the middle section (or ‘neck’). Also the tips - where applicable - and the keeper loop are cut by hand at this stage.After cutting the fabrics, they are either hemmed by hand - giving you the famous hand-rolled untipped finish on the blade and narrow end - or the tips are sewn in. In case a tie is sf-tipped, the tips are sewn in by a seamstress using a sewing machine. Also, at this point the three main parts that make the length of the shell of the tie are connected by that same seamstress. Machine-sewn seams are more compact, have more tension, and can withstand much more strain than a hand-sewn seam. That is why they are so ideal for sewing together the shell of the tie.

It gives Shirt Interlining you a much more durable tie, that can be tied to perfection for many years.The next step is constructing the tie around its heart, the interlininften a wool and/or cotton interlining is used, in various weights, to give you the ideal balance with the characteristics of the tie fabric. Getting that balance right really makes a quality tie stand out from inferior products. This is exactly why the expertise of our tie makers - built up over decades - is so important. They choose the perfect (combination of) interlining for each tie fabric, keeping in mind the amount of folds of the tie, whether it is untipped or self-tipped, etcetera.