Necktie Art

54 Ties, 2008

Artist Charles LeDray uses everyday items in his art: toys, necklaces, pieces of clothing.
His pieces speak of clothing and its impact on our individual identity.
More info here.
Necktie skirt

Grateful Thread will take custom orders using your textiles, and make woven pieces like this wall hanging to "preserve personal memories"

Isaac Amala and Liz Simpson assemble sculptural pieces using neckties.
One their blog, they explain this material choice: "Neckties, idiosyncratic in design and personality, are normally viewed independently of one another. As cultural objects, they bring to mind the world of professionalism, formality, conservatism and business. In our current body of work, we examine the necktie as a formal material rather than formal wear. While we don't necessarily aim to strip the ties of their popular psychological weight, we seek to better understand and ultimately reveal their properties. Organized into gradients, the neckties become agents of the painting process. As building blocks, they function much like tapered pixels - bridging micro- and macro-narratives, embracing the tension between the individual and the sum total. We continue to employ numerous configurations while exploring the physical and associative impact carried out by these forms".

Pass Through Without Any Noise, 2007The gallery describes this piece: "Using thousands of acquired neckties, Isaac Amala and Liz Simpson create large scale sculptural installations. In the popular consciousness, neckties often promise little more than modes of conformity. As a building block, however, these elongated, quadrangular textiles offer a radical trajectory from the world of banal business transactions to one of soft craft, and flamboyant geometry. The forms also highlight our formal wear's most formal elements: through color interaction, repetition of shape, and by considering and transcending the original associations inherent to the materials."
Note there are additional necktie pieces on the blog link.

Seema Nusrat experimented with neckties draped into figural forms.
"(She), in her soft sculptures, all made up of wrapping neckties around abstract figures is making a statement about cultural images." (source)"‘Yellow Mellow’ was a structure made with all kinds of yellow ties. Seema had marvelously created an irregular figure of a woman without any facial features. Initially the artist noticed human figures from where she began looking at drapes without figures and capturing what she observed". (source)

It's a snake!

Really cute article about making toy snakes out of neckties, by Jill M. Nicolaus, courtesy of a wonderful gardening website called Dave's Garden.
(linked with permission)

Even more fun kid's clothes

Adorable halter top and jeans skirt, again by Andrea
(aka abracapocus pocus cadabra)

Precious necktie halter and skirt
I love how the sun peeking through reminds me of a fairy!

Children's clothing

A couple more inspiring ideas from abracapocus pocuscadabra

Little girl's pants made with neckties

And dress, with straps and hidden zipper in the back

Dignified Doggies

I love it when my love of dogs and my love of sewing with neckties overlaps.
Andrea makes dog collars from old neckties, but with a twist--they have a hanging necktie in front
too.
(photo from abracapocus pocuscadabra on Flickr)

I asked Andrea if she had a photo of her pup Chuck wearing his tie.
She said she had a photo of her brother's dog.
Here is Wallace the Pit Bull wearing his necktie.
(isn't he CUTE?! He even has his own fan club!)
(flickr page)

I'm not kidding when I say I talked to Wallace's photo for five minutes when I first saw it.
"oh MISTER! You are SO CUTE!..."
My friend Tracie would laugh out loud if she read this.
She and I both get all squeaky around cute doggies :)