I’m not sure how I really feel about the Black Watch tartan. It’s undeniably cool - and the badass name certainly doesn’t hurt there - but as a fabric for clothing? It’s rather hit or miss.
For example, I believe this is the J.Crew Black Watch sport coat (linked), but you’ll notice that it looks, well, not that great on the J.Crew site (if it’s not that jacket it doesn’t matter - the tartan colors will be nearly identical in any implementation). But it looks excellent here. The lighting and white balance is different; the warmer look here helps it immensely.
Likewise, though, it’s rather illustrative to compare the two looks using the same jacket. Here it’s paired with a white shirt and gray wool pants - this works really well to both allow the jacket colors to stand out, and to at the same time play down the brashness of the look (paradoxically, perhaps). On the J.Crew page they’ve gone all-out with blue, and it just doesn’t work that well.
So - the bottom line is that if you’re careful, Black Watch as a jacket (or anything else) can certainly look really cool. But it’s rather easier than with other patterns to get it wrong, so you may wish to be conservative with the rest of the outfit. I mean, just take away the Ray-Bans here and the look would basically be ruined - it’s a finicky pattern to work with!
(via thetieguy)
