The Big Fat Windsor Knot Takes Washington

New York Times

30-03-2025

On Tuesday, as news piled up about the Trump administration's use of a Signal group chat to discuss military strikes, Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, found himself facing the Senate Committee on Intelligence. He looked like a prep schooler sitting in detention.
His striped tie was yanked off center, and the top button of his dress shirt was conspicuously unfastened, as if too constricting for his neck.
But by the standards of President Trump's cabinet, there was nothing off about Mr. Patel's Dorito-shaped tie. After all, the wide Windsor knot, a symmetrical loop about the size of a Labrador's paw, has become the standard in the administration.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the central character in the group chat debacle, favors plump knots that lack a dimple, giving them the look of a tie drawn by a child. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the E.P.A. administrator Lee Zeldin similarly favor knots scaled somewhere between meatballs and dinner rolls.
For Mr. Trump's congressional address in early March, when Elon Musk, the DOGE leader, finally traded his graphic T-shirts for a suit, his satiny blue tie was looped into a flat, broadsided knot. He may not officially be in Mr. Trump's cabinet, but on that evening he knew the dress code.
The style transcends the West Wing. In their official portraits, Senators Jim Justice of West Virginia, Bernie Moreno of Ohio and Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma demonstrate that they're devotees of a fanned out V-shaped tie. The look is less common across the aisle, but some Democrats are Windsor sticklers, predating this administration. In fact, Senators Mark Kelly of Arizona and Chris Coons of Delaware flaunt two of the fattest, monkey-fisted knots on the Hill.
'It's the new power look,' said G. Bruce Boyer, a former fashion editor of Town & Country magazine, said.
The 1999 book 'The 85 Ways to Tie a Tie' illustrates many of the more esoteric methods for roping silk around one's neck, but we really use only a handful of the knots today. The Windsor, and its brawnier brother, the double Windsor, are on the all-business end of that spectrum, according to Michelle Kohanzo, the president of the Tie Bar in Chicago. (The Windsor knot is named for the Duke of Windsor, though he didn't actually employ the knot; he just wore thicker ties.)
'Historically, you would wear it to really formal or important events,' Ms. Kohanzo said. But today, as even ex-presidents forgo ties in public, most men wear a tie only for formal events or to workplaces clinging to a dated level of decorum. The Windsor has thus become the default.
It wasn't always so in the White House.
In 2001, The Los Angeles Times noted that George W. Bush wore 'his necktie with a rather trim knot that yields a dimple, a staple of contemporary dress.' Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden likewise favored reedier, asymmetrical knots that didn't fill the full cavity of their shirt collars.
There are outliers in Mr. Trump's cabinet, especially among those who came of age when preppy fashions prevailed. The skinny ties that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, wears are looped in a compact hold, about the size of an immature tulip.
But among the comparatively younger members of Trump's administration — those roughly 55 and under — there appears to be a shared thinking that broad knots convey authority.
'There's a brashness to it that kind of says, 'We're taking over and what are you going to do about it?'' Mr. Boyer said. He even ventured that there is something 'Freudian' going on with these tie knots. 'Mine is bigger than yours,' he offered.
As someone old enough to recall that John F. Kennedy's cabinet caused a commotion by wearing tweed sport coats, Mr. Boyer believes that the only tie technique anyone really needs is the unboastful four-in-hand loop.
Mr. Trump himself may not wear the widest tie in Washington, but he favors large, simple, bright clothes that recall the 1980s.
'This kind of '80s, '90s power dressing is coming back,' Ms. Kohanzo said. If men are wearing ties at all, they're embracing them at Gordon Gekko scale.
The Tie Bar's best seller is a three-inch 'moderately fat tie,' Ms. Kohanzo said, and increasingly the company is selling even larger ties, as well as shirts with conspicuous collars.
Business leaders like Jeff Bezos and Sundar Pichai wore Windsor knots when they attended Mr. Trump's inauguration in January. Mr. Bezos rarely wears a tie in public, but when he does, he tends to favor the Windsor. On NBC, sports commentators like Tim Howard are employing this knot. And Jamie Dimon's tie loop looks not that dissimilar to those worn in the White House.
'There's no subtlety to it,' Mr. Boyer said. 'Everything is just a little oversize, glossy, showy, shiny.'