A dude adjusting my collar back stage at a wedding I was shooting for content asked me something that stuck with me weeks later. We were standing around killing time before kickoff, me finishing up touches in the mirror and he, completely unprompted, leaned in and said: “you know none of these fit anybody right? They all just come in a size for a neck that doesn’t exist.”. He was joking about the rental bow tie hanging off our hired groomsman looking like a bat that’s been severely discouraged from flying again but man that guy was on to something because he was right.
Nine times out of ten guys buy a bow tie, skip past the sizing on the website like it’s lying to them, and hope for the best. Then two hours in they’re either sweating through a neck murder scene or sitting limp as a dad joke. Almost all of my first eleven bow ties got returned for one fit reason or another.
Before you wear one wrong I’m gonna let you in on the only two details that actually matter when it comes to whether a bow tie fits you or not. And spoiler alert: neither of them are “does it look good in the model picture?” Trust me they’re both easier than that.
Your Neck Size Matters Way More Than You Think
I did this very thing on camera for an actual paying client once, NOT kidding. I know I wear a 16.5 collar on dress shirts so when I went to order this guy a velvet self tie for a video we were shooting I put “16.5” into the website size calculator and called it a day. Problem was shirts account for collar stays and all sorts of structures behind that fabric keeping it smooth and helping it fit, a bow tie is two ribbons of fabric around your real actual neck with zero shielding. Mine actually measured closer to a size 15.75 naked.
The whole thing had this tiny extra hitch of slack riding under my chin all day long twitching EVERY TIME I turned my head for the shoot. Lowes was just filming me slowly strangling myself at this point. Here’s the deal. Wrap a tape measure around your neck right where your collar would sit, tight but not tight, and then add HALF AN INCH for room to tie the damned thing. Yes half an inch. Most guys have narrower necks than they think because most bow ties include that buffer in the sizing. If you land between sizes, go BIGGER, always. That tie will still cinch down at the knot if it’s too loose, it can’t look ridiculous like a tie that’s too small will.
Sidenote for that: most bow ties come with an adjustment slide with a hook and eye to give you about an inch and a half range in sizes. Things will shift as the day wears on, especially if you’re at a wedding where you’re standing around in your suit cooking in the sun for hours. If you size yourself at the bottom or top of that range instead of the middle it WILL show by cocktail hour. Took me half of a wedding to realize I was on the absolute highest notch in the slide because my actual measurement was on the bottom end and do you know what my tie looked like when I got down the bar to hang with my fellow groomsmen? Like Huck was trying to choke me out with my adam’s apple popping out like I’d swallowed a golf ball. Measure like you’re going to wear that thing all day, hot and miserable, not like you’re trying it on for the first time in front of your bedroom mirror.
Bow Tie Width Matters More Than You’ll Think
You don’t hear people talking about this enough and honestly it’s probably the more important piece once you get your neck size dialed in. Bow ties aren’t just one shape slammed down across your collar, they vary wildly most places now in actual blade width and those two dimensions paired with the wrong face can look terrible. Pretentious? Sure. But if half the table thinks you look like you’re about to bolt upright and start conducting something at your wedding you just paid $350 for you’re going to notice.
I wore a wide classic butterfly bow to a wedding shoot last year and got dragged through the group chat by someone who didn’t realize we were partnered. He just sent me “why do you look like you’re about to conduct an orchestra” and dude I have one of those skinny movie star jaws so that tie looked insane on me live. Big, wide bow? Fits someone with a stockier build or beefier face great. Stick that thing on Paul Newman and you’re gonna look like his bow blouse is devouring his entire collar.
Slim batwing? Depends on your face and body type. That skinny little collar devil everyone seems to be rocking on every menswear Instagram these days is sharp as hell on guys with narrower faces/jaw lines or slim builds. Throw it on Kelvin or me with our slightly rounder juvenalian faces and those bows look like tooth picks getting swallowed by our shirts.
Now I hold every tie up to my jaw line in the store before even tying it, just to ensure the bow itself isn’t dramatically thinner than my face itself at its widest point. It sounds stupid but also how long do you look in stores before you drop $60 on something? Take the extra ten seconds. Don’t be that person who ends up sending it back.
Last little thing I’ll mention is your collar spread, because you want those two sides of the bow tie to work together, not fight. Something skinny works best with a point collar because it mirrors that slim shape down your neck. Wide spread collars want something slightly beefier to balance out that extra space. Didn’t realize that until I filmed myself wearing the exact same tie on a narrow spread collar and then a point collar side by side and personally, one literally looked unfinished while the other popped.
Once you get those two things right, though, it doesn’t matter what you wear it with, you’ll look like you rented the entire outfit from a tailor who actually cares about men’s fashion. Which, if we’re being honest here, you kind of are at that point.
The struggle was real till I figured this out, hope it saves you some returns.
Jamie is in his early twenties, lives in Manchester and makes menswear content for a living. He writes about whatever’s actually trending this week, fast and a bit chaotic, and he’ll happily tell you when he got it wrong.
