What knot do you use?

[Peter Crowe]

I think most of them still do. Certainly my old school still demands school blazer, school shirt and school tie. The dress code then specifies black trousers or skirt and black shoes and further details what style of those is acceptable. As you say, a pain at the time and we always used every dodge to "personalise" our uniform - or so we thought ;) Funny, I see the kids waiting for a bus or walking to school now and think how smart they look.

I too am the 'right' side of 50 (but only by a couple of years) and my experience too with school uniform growing up in Scotland was as you say, we also tried to personalise it a bit depending on the fashions of the time. As an adult, I only ever use three knots, four-in-hand, half-windsor and the full-windsor, of which I most commonly use the half-windsor which started as a preference and has long since become a habit. I first learned how to tie the four-in-hand when I was around five and it is the knot my dad has always used. I learned both variations of the windsor knot as a teenager, but find the full-windsor even with a full spread collar a bit 'too perfect' a look.