Daeron Myers is the CEO of his own company at Courier Business Academy, but he’s walked into meetings and been mistaken for the driver instead — and it was all because of the way he dressed. Now he wears a tie four or five days a week, in negotiations and onstage at the business conferences he hosts.
“A tie doesn’t fix that. Nothing fixes that,” Myers said. “But it can buy me the three seconds I need to open my mouth, and three seconds is usually all I need.” It all goes to show the instant impression a tie can make.
For much of the last century, men had little choice about wearing a tie. The job or dress code required it. In many workplaces, that’s no longer true. The men who still wear one are choosing to, and their choice can reveal something.
Chris Bajda is the managing partner of GroomsDay and helps men make decisions about their ties. His clients often worry about color, but he tells them they are concerned about the wrong thing. “Getting the tie length wrong is far worse than getting the color or fabric wrong,” said Bajda. “A tie should hit right at your belt buckle. If it’s even an inch above, that makes your torso look shorter and just looks sloppy, before you even say a word.”
Length is relatively straightforward. Width is where the experts can’t agree.
“Fellas, a skinny tie is dated in 2026, especially a black skinny tie,” said Jo Hayes, an etiquette expert. “Relegate the skinny tie to the back of the wardrobe and let its wider brothers have their day.”
Brad Rhyne, co-founder of custom suiting company OMJ Clothing in Charlotte, disagrees. “It reads dated only when it’s paired with a slim two-button suit à la 2013,” he said. “On a wider-shouldered, more structured jacket, which is where menswear has moved, a narrower tie actually looks intentional again rather than trend-chasing.”
Dina Cerchione, who has styled Howie Mandel for 20 years and dressed clients including Dr. Phil and Damon Wayans Jr., says the width should match the outfit around it. “Right now, it’s a mid-range width, around 3 inches,” Cerchione said. “But the truth is, tie width needs to match the width of the lapel. If you’re a big guy, a skinny tie is going to look ridiculous, and if you’re a smaller guy, a fat tie will look just as off.”
For five years, Bajda has tracked what his customers buy on his site. Requests for red have fallen while deep green and burgundy have climbed. “Deep green and burgundy do exactly what red used to,” he said, “but they actually look more intentional.”
But red may be doing less work than men think. Psychologist Sal Raichbach says its meaning is more complicated. “Red ties do a good job of telling others to ‘take note’ of you, rather than ‘trust me’ or ‘I am confident,’” he said. “Sometimes we confuse a familiar connection with an unchangeable psychological law.”
That raises another question. Why is the man wearing the tie in the first place? “There’s a big difference between dressing because you’re confident and dressing because you need to feel confident,” said Adria Hagg, a licensed clinical social worker. She has worked with successful professionals who become intensely particular about their appearance before important meetings. For some, she said, the tie becomes “psychological armor.”
“The tie backfires when the wearer is trying to communicate, ‘I belong here,’ while internally feeling, ‘I hope they believe I belong here,’” she said.
For Joseph Gutheinz, the answer is less psychological and more practical. Sometimes the point of a tie is not to be noticed at all. He owns about 300 ties and wears the same five, a habit built over his time working in the Army, federal law enforcement and criminal defense. In that world, drawing attention to your tie was a liability.
“Agents are warned against this in training,” Gutheinz said, “as it allows a suspect to intentionally redirect his or her attention during questioning.” He sticks to narrow, solid or lightly patterned ties in court, although he likes a red “power tie” when he wants to take charge of a room.
Gutheinz would rather his tie stay in the background. Other men have gone the other way, making the tie so much a part of their look that it has become a signature.
Four Celebrity Case Studies
“Trump wears his ties long and wide with a bright red color, and the purpose of this is for the camera or stage-like look,” Bajda said. “But in a small room, it will usually look over the top.”
Hayes zeroes in on Trump’s tie length. She says his tie hangs well below the belt, a choice she attributes to a slimming effect. “As a standard tie rule for any man, a below-the-belt tie looks rather sloppy and untidy in 2026,” she said. “It now looks rather ‘boomer.’”
With Obama, the discussion returns to why a tie can matter beyond fashion. “As a Black man in that office, he couldn’t afford to let the clothes become the story,” Myers said.
Cerchione sees Obama’s restraint more simply. The tie is there, but it doesn’t compete with him. “Obama wears his ties in a more traditional way. The tie coordinates with the outfit, and it’s never overpowering,” the stylist said.
Harvey, an entertainer, does almost the opposite. “It’s showmanship, but it also reminds me of the long tradition in Black churches and community spaces where dressing sharply has communicated achievement, respect and pride,” Myers said. “He brings that to television without apologizing for it.”
Williams is the hardest of the four to pin down. “He has the ability to either wear no tie or wear it intentionally loose. This is the most daring style of the four because breaking a rule only looks confident if everything else is sharp,” Bajda said. Grooms at weddings regularly ask him to re-create the musician’s look. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, it does not translate well onto them,” he added.
Cerchione sees Williams as making the strongest style statement of the group. “He uses his ties as a true personal statement piece,” the stylist said. “They’re always well thought out, have some character to them, and pull his outfits together.”
What links all four, Myers said, is consistency: “That’s what people remember. Not every tie. The signature.”
This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
