Recently I received a letter from an observant La Gazzetta Italiana reader in Lake Forest, Illinois who very nicely chastised us for not showing dimpled ties in our advertisements. At first I took offense at the fact that someone didn’t like our ads. Then I was impressed that La Gazzetta and my ad had reached across the Great Lakes, which is a great testimony to the distributorship of this fine paper and goes to show how far Cleveland/Italian news reaches. After silently congratulating myself and the management of La Gazzetta on having so wisely spent my advertising dollars, I got to thinking that maybe this fellow had a valid point.

Now, most people are not dimple aficionados, but for the conoscenti the dimple is a very important part of the tie…sometimes. The dimple is the indentation or crease that appears just below the knot of the tie and is very simple to create by pressing your index finger in the center of the tie just below the knot while pushing up toward the knot. For years it was the mark of sartorial elegance and still is, but something revolutionary happened in Italy four or five years ago. The tie knot went 1970’s mode and became very large to fit the very wide spread collars which are the European mainstay. Consequently, the dimple became almost non-existent.

The two most popular tie fabrics sold today are "wovens" and "prints". "Printed" ties generally have a smoother and shinier finish and require a substantially smaller, tighter knot due to its slippery finish. "Woven" ties have a bulkier; three-dimensional look to the weave and tend to keep a better shape if knotted larger and looser. In the last few years, sales of "woven" ties have outsold "printed" ties three to one.

As a company we show almost exclusively, classic Italian styled clothing and with the popularity of the wide spread collar, the larger un-dimpled knot has moved into the dimple territory, so to speak. That does not mean that you cannot make a dimple in a larger woven tie, but in keeping with our policy, we have to show our customers what is generally being worn in Italy.

So to answer our loyal Gazzetta reader in Lake Forest, Illinois…you
are absolutely right to question our advertisement, but we are also right, so lets call it "un pareggio" (a draw or a tie…. I had to slip that one in!).