Why a certain bow tie shape came to be known as the ‘Mayfair’ I do not know but I assume it has something to do with Mayfair, London. When I first began making ties there was a company called Lido which was still making ties in Sydney, Australia and in those early days I made bow ties through Lido before taking control over our production entirely. In those days the company was based in Marrickville, now one of the trendier suburbs often listed on hip places to live in the world right now. Back then it was mostly the remnants of industry left in the city in terms of apparel production. The designer Akira Isogawa, for example, was no more than two streets away. The best embroiderer in Sydney, Zois, was in the same building as Lido.
The business Lido was started by two Polish Holocaust survivors, Sabina and Zdenek Wolanski, in 1950. They patented the clip-on bow tie and one of their models- I believe the range was called ‘After Six’ was popular through the 70’s - was called the Mayfair and it was from this clip on bow tie as a reference that we came up with one of our first designs, which we aptly named the Mayfair too.
Mayfair as a style of bow tie is not universal. But it is considered to be a sort of flared butterfly, and it suggests timeless elegance. Paramount’s head Bobby Evans wore one to the premiere of The Godfather in 1972. My father wore one on his wedding day. There are many examples of them, some can be seen on the old Roasts where Don Rickles, Foster Brooks and Dean Martin shone like diamonds. Some of these bow ties were hand-tied, some were pre-tied, some were pre-tied clip-ons. In the case of velvet it was near enough impossible to make them hand-tied.
You may have seen the post we did recently of being asked to re-create the same shape of bow tie for a wedding customer in Sydney. In fairness, during the resurgence of interest in evening wear, the designer Tom Ford did a great job of recreating this look but in his own way, a hybrid hand-tied bow tie which was pre-tied and anchored in a stitch and then plumped up by foam inserts. It was a highly successful design for him and to this day people still chase that look.
As we serve enthusiast bow tie wearers we never ventured down the foam inserts direction and so our ties have a most definite and distinct look about how they are hand-tied.
Our task from the customer was to recreate a Mayfair shape, or something similar, but hand-tied, no inserts. We are ready to deliver these bow ties to the wedding party.
It is always lovely to have a challenge from customers – so if you want to put us to task – you start by texting this number - +61413140994