Prom season kicks off their comeback.
Kentucky Derby parties confirm it.
Wedding season seals the matter entirely.

While the tuxedo remains one of the last surviving examples of social clarity in menswear (there are rules… rules which mostly work… The room looks better when people follow them). The purpose and meaning of the bow tie, however, drifts in and out with the tides.

Every spring, young men arrive at their local menswear shop, convinced by a forceful cavalcade of mothers (oddly, it is rarely their own) they need one in emerald satin or sequined magenta to match or approximate the shade of their date’s dress. Somewhere along the way, formalwear became confused with coordinated branding.

It’s a ledge I’ve spent a fair amount of time talking people back from.

Consider: among the many purposes of the tuxedo, its practical raison d’être is to act as a wardrobe placeholder. The tuxedo is just one more of men’s societally confirmed uniforms. The garments exist to present the surroundings rather than compete with them.

In hospitality, service workers wear them to present the hotel room, the food as it is served, the well-made and better presented cocktail.

To some degree, the same should be observed with regards to proms and weddings. Men should fade into the background. Their date, their significant other, their bride should be escorted by an otherwise forgettable presenter. Anything worn to siphon attention away from her should be verboten.

The standard black bow tie survives because it disappears.

Not because colorful bow ties are inherently wrong. Far from it.

The problem is that most misunderstand what the bow tie is actually doing.

—

Like the tuxedo itself, the bow tie’s purpose is not self-expression so much as visual harmony. It removes variables. It lowers the temperature of the room. It allows the occasion—not the individual—to take precedence.

This is why when done correctly, black tie looks cinematic. The uniformity creates atmosphere.

A room full of proper dinner jackets behaves visually the way a choir sounds.

One voice can rise above the others, but only because the group is working together.

—

And yet…

When I consider the appropriate times and places for adding the flourish of color to the bow-shaped cravat, I’m reminded that some of the most stylish men who have ever lived wore colorful bow ties–not novelty ties, not cartoon ties, not the sort of thing sold seasonally near graduation tables at department stores. I mean real bow ties: madras, foulards, ancient silk prints, sun-faded cottons tied slightly imperfectly after years of repetition.

The difference is intention and context.

Regarding the image above: Do as I say, not as I do. Though, to the point of context, those of us who participated in this military wedding party wore repp stripe ties (note: not regimental stripes) in suitable navy, royal blue and gold to blend in with the men and women in their military dress uniforms. Also, this was a wedding in the southeastern United States.

Context: a bow tie worn to a spring garden wedding in Charleston behaves differently than one worn to a banquet hall in suburban St. Louis in April. One belongs to a lineage. The other acts like a costume.

The same can be said of the regionally attributable or the seasonal: fabrics like seersucker, spectator shoes, dinner jackets in unusual colors, velvet slippers, or nearly any article of clothing associated with “personality” may have a time and a place, but unless you’re certain that time and place are specifically valid to the circumstances, revert to the uniform choices as dictated by societal norms.

The line between charm and performance is narrower than most people realize.

—

Those who pull off a colorful bow tie without appearing ironic (or stooping to pressures of women who do not understand that standing out has never been the purpose of men’s dress) understand proportion, occasion, restraint… humor.

As Carrie Fisher’s character in When Harry Met Sally says, “We can’t all have good taste and a sense of humor.”

As someone who once thought himself to have both, a notion critically undermined by my stepdaughters, my wife and most of my closest friends (calling all gluttons for punishment), I’d argue that most do not.

But those who make it work, who know when a room needs brightening and when it doesn’t, those happy few tend to dress with affection for other people rather than for themselves.

Which brings me to the small handful of men who, in my estimation, truly understood the colorful bow tie.

And why almost all of them belonged to worlds that barely exist anymore.

The key to the colorful bow tie wearers is that they were rarely “fashion-focused guys.”

Instead, they were:

• hosts
• editors
• professors
• Southerners
• bandleaders
• raconteurs
• diplomats
• theater people
• old-money eccentrics
• men who understood occasion

The colorful bow tie works best on men who seem to have forgotten they’re wearing one. That’s the through-line.

Paul Newman

Rarely associated with bow ties, but for the circumstances in which he wore one it never looked ornamental. It looked necessary to the evening.

His appearance at the Venice Film Festival in 1963 remains one of the great examples of understanding occasion and proportion. The tuxedo, the cropped beard, the restrained bow tie: everything worked because nothing appeared overly considered, despite clearly having been considered carefully.

Newman was there promoting Hud, arriving slightly roughened around the edges, exteriorizing something of the character without descending into costume. In an era before personal stylists and image consultants flattened every leading man into the same shape, he understood that presentation could deepen the story rather than distract from it.

The colorful bow tie, when it works, operates similarly… not as decoration, but as continuity.

Noel Coward

Probably the platonic ideal.

Silk dressing gowns. Cigarettes. Sharp wit. Operatic social confidence.

A colorful bow tie on Noel Coward looked less like peacocking and more like punctuation.

Miles Davis

In certain late-’50s and early-’60s appearances.

Not prep. Not ironic.

Just absolute command of silhouette and atmosphere.

Bing Crosby

The relaxed American version.

Holiday parties. Smoking jackets. Slightly rumpled elegance.

Tom Wolfe

Dangerously close to caricature, but saved by total commitment.

That’s important.

The bow tie punishes hesitation.

Fred Rogers

One of the most important examples.

Not stylish because of fashion.

Stylish because everything was integrated into the man himself.

Warmth legitimized the clothing.

Southern Political / Academic Men

This is a whole category:

• university presidents
• attorneys
• Episcopal clergy
• newspaper columnists

The colorful bow tie survives best in places where ritual and regional continuity survive.

The Real Insight

The colorful bow tie only works when the man wearing it appears more interesting than the tie itself. That’s the line… and that, sadly, is not most of us.

The moment the tie becomes:
• personal branding
• novelty
• “look at me”

…it dies.

The Missing Ingredient

Ease.

Every successful colorful bow tie wearer shares:
• confidence
• humor
• social fluency
• restraint

They don’t appear to be making a statement. They appear to be continuing a conversation already in progress.

The colorful bow tie survives best on men who understand that charm is an offering, not a performance.

Originally published in The All Plaidout Almanac on Substack, May 18, 2026.