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 A necktie, is a piece of cloth worn for decorative purposes around the neck, resting under the shirt collar and knotted at the throat, and often draped down the chest.

There are four main knots used to knot neckties. In rising order of difficulty, they are:

  • the four-in-hand knot. The four-in-hand knot may be the most common.
  • the Pratt knot (the Shelby knot)
  • the half-Windsor knot
  • the Windsor knot (also redundantly called the “full Windsor” and the “Double Windsor”).

Although he did not invent it, the Windsor knot is named after the Duke of Windsor. The Duke did favor a voluminous knot; however, he achieved this 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 85 knots are possible with a conventional tie (limiting the number “moves” used to tie the knot to nine; longer sequences of moves result in too large a knot or leave the hanging ends of the tie too short). The models were published in academic journals, while the results and the 85 knots were published in layman’s terms in a book entitled The 85 Ways to Tie a Tie. Of the 85 knots, Fink and Mao selected 13 knots as “aesthetic” knots, using the qualities of symmetry and balance. Other types of knots include:

  • Small knot (also “oriental knot”, “Kent knot”): the smallest possible necktie knot. It forms an equilateral triangle, like the half-Windsor, but much more compact (Fink–Mao notation: Lo Ri Co T, Knot 1). It is also the smallest knot to begin inside-out.
  • Nicky knot: an alternative version of the Pratt knot, but better-balanced and self-releasing (Lo Ci Ro Li Co T, Knot 4). Supposedly named for Nikita Khrushchev, it tends to be equally referred to as the Pratt knot in men’s style literature. This is the version of the Pratt knot favored by Fink and Mao.
  • Atlantic knot: a reversed Pratt knot, highlighting the structure of the knot normally hidden on the back. For the wide blade to remain in front and right-side-out, the knot must begin right-side-out, and the thin end must be wrapped around the wide end. (Ri Co Ri Lo Ci T; not cataloged by Fink and Mao, but would be numbered 5r according to their classification.)
  • Prince Albert knot (also “double knot”, “cross Victoria knot”): A variant of the four-in-hand with an extra pass of the wide blade around the front, before passing the wide blade through both of the resultant loops (Li Ro Li Ro Li Co T T, Knot 62). A version knotted through only the outermost loop is known as the Victoria knot (Li Ro Li Ro Li Co T, Knot 6).
  • Christensen knot (also “cross knot”): An elongated, symmetrical knot, whose main feature is the cruciform structure made by knotting the necktie through the double loop made in the front.

 

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