How to Tie a Tie Knot – The Kelvin Knot

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The Kelvin Knot is one of the lesser-known tie knots around, yet it’s a nice variation of the Oriental Knot. In today’s video, I show you How To Tie a Kelvin Tie Knot the easy way, with step-by-step instructions so your tie knot looks crisp every time. 

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The Kelvin Knot is slightly asymmetrical and not too big, thus working nicely with all ties including knit ties. All men can wear it, but it’s great for those with smaller heads. If you are interested in quality ties, take a look here.

If you are interested in a similar, slightly smaller knot, check out our video on the Oriental Knot.

Transcript:

Welcome back on our series on how to tie tie knots! Today, I’m going to show you to tie the Kelvin knot.

Basically, the Kelvin knot is just like the oriental when you loop the long end once around more. That creates a bigger knot for more volume and a slightly different look in terms of size. Here, I’m wearing a navy blue jacquard tie from Fort Belvedere and it’s rather substantial, it’s heavy Italian silk and so the knot gets even bigger than with a thinner tie. Normally, it can still work with collar pins, in case you choose a thick tie like this one, I would recommend you use an oriental knot or a four in hand knot just to keep the knot smaller.

The Kelvin Knot is like the Oriental and you want the sewn side up. To start, you have the slim end is gonna be much shorter about one and a half hands above your waistband . So slim end, like so and now you loop it around half and then you tighten, you pinch it with your fingers and now you go around once more, so one more loop and now you take the wide end, you come through from the back here, pull it tight and get it through the knot. Here, you just want to go through the last layer, not both layers. Just the last layer you create with your knot, you hold it, place gently and pull through like so. Now you want your little dimple in there, pinch and just pull. Once you’re ready, you pull on the short end slightly, adjust it until you like the look. Voila! The Kelvin knot. With a thick tie like this one, I prefer kind of a medium spread to cutaway collar, you can see here it kind of accentuates the shoulders in a way and it’s wide enough to accommodate a bigger knot like that. Use a thinner tie, probably a medium spread is ideal but I would not recommend wearing really strong cutaways and classic collars may work if it’s thinner. If it’s a little bit thicker, you may run into troubles but just test it and see what works best for you. Basically, you want to expose a knot and not cover it up by your collar.

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Reader Comments

  1. Thanks so much for these informative videos and articles! It seems to me that this and the Oriental knot are a reversed four in hand knot, wrapped twice, in the former instance, and so the look is identical to the four in hand knot and its double wrapped variant?

    1. James,

      That’s not the case at all. The Kelvin and the Oriental are similar because they start the same way. The oriental and a four in hand are tied differently and look different because the way they start and the way they are tied. A four in Hand has one-half turn more than an Oriental.

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