Length: 55”
Width: 2.5”
The final of twelve square-end ties from midcentury designer Alexander Shields, this is a lustrous raw silk shantung dyed red-orange (slightly more orange than the phone camera can convey). 100% slubbed raw silk, designed and made by Alexander Shields and retailed through I. Magnin, the former San Francisco high-end department store, c.1950s/1960s. Very good to excellent vintage condition, one instance of color fading 3.25” from tip that is visible from some angles.
“Originality is their trademark.” Had you been at 58th Street and Park Avenue in the 1950s and 1960s, you might have peered into the shop of Alexander McMillan Shields (1916-2010), an influential designer of his day, but today a largely obscure figure. Together with his wife “Sandy” (actress Aina Constant, 1913-2009), he produced outfits that brought simplicity of design, trim silhouettes, and modern comfort into menswear while expanding the range of colors available to the male consumer. After having spent much of his adolescence (and later military service) at sea, he forwent a diplomatic career in favor of devoting himself to modernizing men’s fashion—some of his innovations failed to endure (buttonless suits, short “dinky” jackets, “Americanized” yukata), yet others, such as tartan dinner jackets and use of performance fabrics, have endured. In regard to neckwear, Shields’s trademark was square-end tie, usually of fine Swiss silk, and always stunning in their use of color.