People ask me all the time “Why the bowtie?” It is my work uniform and has become synonymous with Joshua Garrett for many people. I started wearing one about 11 years ago when I lived in Baku. The director of instruction at the school in Tbilisi was a tall man and wore a bowtie. I hadn’t actually seen a person wear one in real life and liked the way it looked on him. I asked my mother-in-law to send me one to try out.
Like many people, the prospect of tying a self-tie bowtie was daunting. I had tied a four-in-hand knot virtually my entire life. I was required to put one on every day in college. I remember my grandfather teaching me how to tie a Windsor knot when I was six or seven. But a bowtie seemed like a skill that was elusive and required years of training. When I finally mustered up enough courage to tackle the challenge, I did what any person at that time would do, I searched “how to tie a bowtie” in Google. Quickly enough, I found a competent teacher, and after 10-15 minutes of wrestling with the knot, I was finally able to tie one.
After my first wearing, I was hooked. There are two main benefits for me of wearing a bowtie. First, I am a tall person (6’6”). It was a challenge to tie a standard tie to the correct length. Either the front long part of the tie would be too long and the short part would not tuck securely into the hole on the back of the long part, or the tie would be too short and would emphasize my then growing belly. With a bowtie, I have none of that. Second, I always dropped my tie in my soup or salad and made a mess. With a bowtie, there is no concern when I bend over my lunch to sit down. My bowtie will not encounter my meal in any way.