Things That Excite Us: Wyatt Cenac Wears Of a Kind for His Last Investigation on The Daily Show

Please accept this as further proof that your husband/brother/roommate wants our Yes, Deer Tie by The Knottery (only $45, guys!) this holiday season. —erica

Next Level: Boyish Florals

Dude-friendly flowers? Oh, we’ve seen bunches of them. Here, four top-notch, in-bloom find.s —erica

LEVEL I: On a tie—talk about easy-breezy. DiBi—a line that funds rural education—keeps things matte and cool.

LEVEL II: The small pattern on this Shades of Grey button-down makes it EXTRA approachable.

LEVEL III: An Opening Ceremony x Adidas collab? What’s not to sweat?

LEVEL IV: Mark McNairy loves a daisy. And we heart his willingness to go there, combining it with camo for one of the coolest rucksacks we’ve ever seen.

There’s so much more “Next Level” to be had! Click on through.

Saturday Mornings With the Sovereign Beck Twosome

How what they do apart influences the line.

Between hustling for their tie brand Sovereign Beck and working their respective full-time jobs—Ryan Sovereign is a print designer for an apparel company, and Will Beck works at Gramercy Park’s Vintage Thrift—these guys try to carve out time all for themselves. “We spend a lot of time together, and some of our best ideas have come out of hanging out socially, without all the tie stuff,” Will says. “But I have no idea what Ryan does in the morning.” Spend a typical Saturday A.M. in the life of the Sovereign Beck boys—separately. —lauren caruso

Get the tie these guys made for us—as good for days off as ones at the office.

WILL 

“I usually wake up around 9 on weekends. Sometimes I’ll go down to the flea market, go grocery shopping, or take a nice long walk. The mornings are usually a pretty low-key affair.”

“Since I work at a vintage store, I have a little more freedom to dress how I want. When it gets cooler out, I like to wear a tie, but during the summer, wearing one is certainly not my favorite thing. I like to dress up when I go out on the weekends though.”

“This is my backyard in Brooklyn. An outdoor space was something I was definitely looking for in an apartment, and I spend a lot of time out there. It’s got the bamboo fencing all around, and it was kind of bare when we moved in. I’m always out there trimming stuff and weeding. There’s definitely a creativity factor to it, and there’s also that nice peacefulness to simply being outside in nature and relaxing.”

“The Triple Decker is a weekend favorite. It’s a huge menu, so they have everything from your basic bacon egg & cheese to their own burger concoctions.”

“We usually meet at our studio, which is also Ryan’s loft, on Tuesdays and Saturday mornings. On my walk there, this is in between Greenpoint and Sunset Park where it gets a little more industrial. Along that stretch, there’s a lot of big walls with work that’s constantly changing.”

“This is where we do our magic. Oh, and also clean with Windex.” 

RYAN 

“This is a day in the life of me…on vacation. I’m in Maryland with my girlfriend, who’s a singer. She’s performing with her mother tonight. And I’m going to wear a tie! Of course, I spent the morning drinking coffee next to a ceramic cat on the porch.”

“After breakfast, we went out to a thrift store. Half of it was dedicated to Halloween, so I saw it as a prime opportunity to do some holiday shopping.”

“During a weekend thrift run, I usually comb every single aisle except for kids’ toys. Housewares are usually my first stop followed by electronics, though I never buy anything there because it never works. But it’s cool to check out VCRs and record players. I didn’t buy this album, but I should of.”

“I always check the neckties. We have a whole drawer of ties we just like.”

“This is a portrait of 50 Cent, who I have a soft spot for. I didn’t buy it. I would not want it in my apartment. Maybe we should do airbrushed portrait ties…”

“When we got back from the thrift store, I just saw a pile of leaves and a rake sitting there, so I just got to it. I haven’t raked leaves in about 15 years. It was a lot more satisfying than I remember.”

Sovereign Beck Gets Sketchy

How do you come up with a tie print? Like this.

“My mom used to make ties for my dad back in the sixties and seventies, so I’d always wear one of his oversize, printed styles,” explains Will Beck of his all-boys-school wardrobe essential. Decades later, he and his partner in crime Ryan Sovereign (who was into comic-book-style drawing during his junior-high days) have built a neckwear line around their affection for the classic three-inch tie and mathematica-inspired print design. Here, see how the latter comes to life. —lauren caruso

Ryan: “Sometimes designs start with a little Post-it doodle. Sometimes it’s pretty laborious, and we spend a ton of time redrawing and finessing the sketch. I can’t really remember where this one came from, but I probably saw something somewhere that inspired it and wanted to sketch it before I forgot. Or could have just been: Draw a line, draw another, and keep adding.”

Ryan: “Often, when a pattern idea sparks, we’ll hand-draw it…and then we’ll think maybe it’d be done better in Illustrator. Sometimes it’ll start off one way, and once it’s scanned into the computer, it’ll end completely differently.”

Ryan: “I don’t know that we have a color palette that we really gravitate to. There are colors we don’t like—like orange, green, and tan—so that usually narrows it down. Pink seems to come up a lot. It matches everything.”

Will: “Our ties are hand-cut and -sewn, and we only work with all-natural fabrics like silk, wool, cotton, and linen. It’s best to see the fabrics in person and feel them—if they’re too thick, then the tie won’t tie right. In terms of width, 2 ¾ to 3 inches looks right to us. A lot of our bigger, bolder patterns would look disproportionate and, well, downright silly on a skinny tie.”

Don’t miss out on the style they made just for us! It’ll be up for grabs tomorrow, via our email list.

A Day in the Life of The Knottery

Livin’ the dream.

Jack Fischman and Jay Arem have their own men’s accessory line The Knottery. Must be exciting, huh? Well, sometimes! Here’s what an average day looks like for the two (very charming and funny) Brooklyn guys. —jackie varriano

Score the knit tie the managed to dream up for us one day at the office. It’s plain awesome.

6:30 a.m.
Jay: Wake up and make breakfast for the clan; drink coffee number one.
Jack: I’ve been up for 20 minutes, bro.

8:00 a.m.
Jay: Put the kids on bus, start thinking about vacation, cross the street back to the house, and stop dreaming.
Jack: Wipe baby food from my eyes. My son is a thrower.

9:00 a.m.
Jay: Get into office and look for things to do.
Jack: Get into the office and start stressing that I have too much to do. Think about going back home.

11:00 a.m.
Jay: Start planning lunch. Inspect two new fabrics that came in.
Jack: Consider having a fourth coffee.

11:10 a.m.
Jay: Make a 2 Chainz reference about first fabric and a Mexican drug blanket reference about the other.
Jack: Quickly Google 2 Chainz.

12:00 p.m.
Jack & Jay: Lunch and coffee.

2:00 p.m.
Jay: Help unload some new inventory, letting everyone know I’m sore from my new fitness routine.
Jack: Tell everyone that it was actually me who helped unload the inventory.

4:00 p.m.
Jay:  Look at this ribbon we bought six months ago to see if I have any ideas yet for its use. Zero.
Jack: Look up receipt. Start worrying. Maybe we can get a refund?

4:01 p.m.
Jack & Jay: Quickly get distracted by a YouTube clip someone tweeted.

5:01 p.m.
Jack: Respond to wife’s text, saying that I just left the office. Quickly start leaving the office.
Jay: Close the lights and nap for five minutes before going home to help out. 

Skinny Vinny

Most upstart fashion lines don’t launch to fanfare, but in the Skinny Vinny origin story, public attention plays a lead role. “When I was working as a product designer, I had these ideas for bags in my head—I’d see people not being able to reach the bottom of what they were carrying, and I thought, ‘How can I fix that problem?’” says Vincent Lai, the born-and-bred Brooklynite, of the 2008 beginnings of his hyper-functional line. “One day I made a sample, just to see if my ideas worked. I took a picture, and sent it to some friends, who sent it to their friends—and from there, blogs and magazines picked it up.” In no time, requests started flying in from buyers and editors, and Vincent took that industrial-design training of his from Carnegie Mellon and went full-steam ahead.

Today, Skinny Vinny—a high school nickname Vincent earned growing up in a very Italian neighborhood—includes wallets and bow ties, too. And they came about in the same happenstance and thoughtful manner as that first design. “I’d walk around other studios and factories, and there’d be excess fabric that the designers didn’t know what to do with,” he recalls. “So I said, ‘Instead of you throwing it out, why don’t I make something out of it?’” Staying true to his roots, Vincent sketches, cuts, and sews everything by hand in his South Brooklyn studio. And, oh: Because of the deadstock nature of some materials, certain products can only be produced in limited runs—something we can no doubt get behind. —jiayi ying

skinny-vinny.com

Of a Kind

In this General Knot & Co. tie, you’d absolutely be the flamingo kid. —erica

Next Level: Crazy Silk Ties

Even if you’re the kind of guy who avoids ties whenever possible, it’s tough in the summer with all those weddings and nonsense. But it’s not like you have to go with a classic Repp stripe—these silk versions have a ton of ‘tude but are a whole lot fresher than the piano-key alternative. —erica

LEVEL I: This Marwood tie is like a louder, Atari-fied take on camo. And while it’s no doubt bold, it would look pretty approachable with a khaki suit.

LEVEL II: Want to show black-tie what’s up? Knot on this paint-splatted number from Band of Outsiders.

LEVEL III: Whoa, right? The Knottery is all about doing a twisted take on the classics, and the zigzags and shocking turquoise definitely shake things up.

LEVEL IV: In. Sane. Thanks for this, Sovereign Beck.

For more “Next Level” action, click this way.

Of a Kind

If you thought The Hill-Side was nutso before, get a load of what they have in store for spring: This Guatemalan ikat screams, “I wear a tie because I want to.” —erica