I think it was Warren Buffet who said to praise individually and to admonish categorically, so today I want to praise the timeless elegance of Fabio Attanasio in Florence with such lovely proportions in his dinner jacket and bow tie and say what a privilege it is that both men like Fabio wear our products and how much as a business owner it still excites me to see where our bow ties might pop up next. And categorically, concurrently, I wish to admonish all those that refuse to make the effort with their black tie ensembles.
The code of "black tie" has broadened with time but one of the reasons I still love it so much is it it like football - everyone follows roughly the same rules - only it becomes apparent very quickly as to who is the better player and when you watch some men develop out their own sense of style within the confines of "the game", well, put simply, it becomes a spectator sport.
Fabio wears our black grosgrain silk - what we refer to on the website as The Majestic Grosgrain. It's our most popular black grosgrain silk bow tie, using silk loomed for us in the province of Como. Technically it is a faille, not a grosgrain, but this is a common misnomer in tuxedos these days. Grosgrain literally means "fat grain" in French but a faille isn't quite fat, it is in fact a very fine grain. As opposed to satin silk it is more muted and for some that equates to a more timeless look, less flashy as satin.
For me, personally, I prefer satin, our house satin above all others, but more me this is because most of the dinner jackets I own are satin faced and, more importantly, our satin silk creates beautiful dimples and contours that don't appear quite the same when you tie the same knot in a grosgrain/faille.
Nevertheless, as Fabio shows us here, either way, satin or grain, you will look so refined in a hand-tied bow tie.