[Urbane Guerrilla]

Four-in-hand knot, Fargon -- a mirror to look in is helpful:

1. Shirt buttoned to neck, flip up collar; drape tie around neck, fat end well down, skinny end touching your third shirt button.

2. Fat end (aka long end) to left shoulder. The ends are now roughly perpendicular to each other.

3. Fat end passed behind skinny end to reach right shoulder. First you went left, now you go right.

4. Right index finger placed upright in front of the bits of the tie that are wrapped together right at the front of the collar where your knot will be.

5. Fat end back all the way to the left shoulder again, over that upright finger which is holding things open to put the fat end through again.

6. Fat end to the knot, going beneath the part of the tie that's going around your neck, and then tuck it through the hole your finger is holding open, pull down the fat end below the knot. Fat end should hang down farther than the skinny end.

7. Flip collar down; adjust tightness with the skinny end, and control things with a tie bar or tie tack if you like that look. I do, disliking having my tie swaying back and forth like an elephant's trunk. The style of your collar should coordinate with the size of your tie knot: big knots want regular or spread collars (which are very cut away), bitsy knots need a collar whose points are close together -- see Tom Wolfe's outfits for an extreme example of this. Fashion in ties cycles back and forth between wide and narrow, so after some years a trendy guy has accumulated quite a battery of varied widths in ties. I only bother with silk ties and woolen tartan ties -- polyester picks at one's morale: "I chose the cheapo, bargain brand." Go ahead and splurge on the thirty bucks' worth of silk.