Article: Men's style: On the trail of the tricky dicky The bow tie is hardly cutting-edge fashion, but your evening dress needs it. Sholto Byrnes set out to replace his old, wilted specimen, but he found the quest a lot harder than he'd bargained for

If "a man's tie is a penis symbol", as the American author Betty Lehan Harragan once asserted, then goodness knows what that makes a bow tie. Still, there's no doubting its importance to the male wardrobe. Some might think that the bow tie has a rather worn reputation: Winston Churchill, Frank Muir and Robin Day are hardly cutting edge, and Robert Maxwell is not an example anyone would want to follow. On a younger man a bow tie can look affected, and the Heinz Wolff look suits only eccentric academics and elderly violin teachers.

Nevertheless, with evening dress, a black tie is still de rigueur, and my own quest for a new dicky bow had its beginning at just such an occasion. Dressing for a ...

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