How to Tie a Tie - Four in Hand Knot

Hi, I am Ethan Drath of Sherman Pickey in Washington D.C., we're here to tie a tie today. This is how you tie a Four-in-Hand Knot.

Take your shirt tie, make sure it is fully extended and all ready to go. Be sure that you have a collar dress shirt on, button it all the way up, including the top button. Go ahead and loosen your collar up, and you might even want to just go ahead and flip it up to give yourself some room to work with.

Start by taking the shirt tie. Youre going to want to have the fat end on your right hand side, the narrow end naturally on the left. Go ahead, put the tie over your neck; this is an important step here. Youre going to want to make sure that the more wide side is considerably longer than the narrow side. Ties come in varying lengths, but a good rule of thumb is to have at least 12 inches of difference between the longer, more wide side from the skinny, more narrow side.

Start by crossing that wider side over the more narrow side. Once you have done that, youre going to want to go ahead and take that wider side, flip it over, starting to creat a knot at that narrow side, bring it all the way on through until it is underneath the narrow side. At this point you will have the narrow side over the wide side. Take your right hand again, go ahead and feed that wider side through the knot you have created. I'm going to do sort of an up and under to over motion. At this point you will have that wider side over the narrow side, and you have a knot forming. Use your thumb to create a little bit of an opening there in that knot, take that wider side, feed it right on through that opening. Youre starting to form your knot right there. At this point youre going to want to create a dimple. Use your index finger, generally from your left hand, to create that. Youre going to want to go right in the middle of the fat part of the tie, nearest the knot there, and create a little bit of an indent, as even as you can on both sides. Hold on to that, take that narrow side and you can start to tighten up the Four-in-Hand knot. Use the narrow side while holding that knot and start to shimmy it on up on your neck, to get it into place. It is a good time then to readjust your dimple. You can do so by keeping your index finger in there, making sure youve got that wedge, and pulling back on down, all the while making sure your tie is straight. As you do that, you can use that under side, start to shimmy it back on up, get it nice and taut. Get it in position on your neck to be finished. Once you feel that you have got it in place, make sure that you have it high enough on your collar there, so it doesnt show, but so that you can still get your collar to flush and down, like so, have it in position. With that you have a Four-in-Hand Knot.