(Collected and Edited by Jinfa Tie)

Four main neckwear knots

There are four main knots used to knot neckties. The simplest, the four-in-hand knot, may be the most common. The others (in order of difficulty) are the Pratt knot (the Shelby knot), the half-Windsor knot, and the Windsor knot (also erroneously called the "double-Windsor"). The Windsor knot is the thickest knot of the four, since its tying has the most steps.

The Windsor knot is named after the Duke of Windsor, although he neither invented nor used it. The Duke did favour a voluminous knot; however, he achieved such by having neckties specially made of thicker cloths.

In the late 1990s, two researchers, Thomas Fink and Yong Mao of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory, used mathematical modeling to discover that eighty-five (85) knots are possible with a conventional tie (limiting the number of moves to nine).

Four-in-hand

The four-in-hand necktie (as distinct from the four-in-hand knot) was fashionable in Great Britain in the 1850s. Early neckties were simple, rectangular cloth strips cut on the square, with square ends. The term "four-in-hand" originally described a carriage with four horses and a driver; later, it also was the name of a London gentlemen's club. Some etymologic reports are that carriage drivers knotted their reins with a four-in-hand knot (see below), whilst others claim the carriage drivers wore their scarves knotted 'four-in-hand', but, most likely, members of the club began wearing their neckties so knotted, thus making it fashionable. In the latter half of the 19th century, the four-in-hand knot and the four-in-hand necktie were synonymous. As fashion changed from stiff shirt collars to soft, turned-down collars, the four-in-hand necktie knot gained popularity; its sartorial dominance rendered the term "four-in-hand" redundant usage, shortened "long tie" and "tie".

In 1926, Jesse Langsdorf from New York introduced ties cut on the bias (US) or cross-grain (UK), allowing the tie to evenly fall from the knot without twisting; this also caused any woven pattern such as stripes to appear diagonally across the tie.

Today, four-in-hand ties are part of men's formal clothing in both Western and non-Western societies, particularly for business.

Four-in-hand ties are generally made from silk, cotton, polyester or, common before World War II but not as popular nowadays, wool. They appear in a very wide variety of colours and patterns, notably striped (often diagonally), club ties (often with a small motif repeated regularly all over the tie) and solids. "Novelty ties" featuring icons from popular culture (such as cartoons, actors, holiday images), sometimes with flashing lights, have been quite prevalent since the 1990s, as have paisley ties.

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