Few things if any beat a comfortable flannel shirt with big pockets.
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I tend to go for pocket tees or polos I pick up at a local discount store for $4-5. I’m REALLY hard on shirts! If it’s not paint, resin or cutting fluid it’s pizza grease.
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I work with an older engineer, MIT grad, who wears a shirt and tie to work every day. In Tucson, at a university, in the basement. It’s quite the strange thing. Must be the only one in Tucson. He even wears his tie when working on the telescopes.
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I’ve taken to buying cheap shirts in bulk off eBay. I wear a whole bunch in a row and them take them every other month to the laundromat so they don’t clog up our home washing machine with sawdust and grease.
See, I’d love to dress to the nines every day. I even went through a phase of making my own cuff-links. It just isn’t practical when doing certain sorts of work. But it has nothing to do with appearance for me. I’m simply more comfortable when I’m dressed up. I think that may be a small part of why I went more into the theory side of computational physics and mostly leave running the experiments to handier people. But other that writing, all my hobbies involve something antithetical to fashion.
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Am I the only person who ever liked wearing a tie? These days I can, and do, wear jeans, but when I first started in IT they wanted all of the males to wear ties, for some reason. Even when they relaxed the rule, I had gotten so used to wearing them (and had spent enough money on them) that I kept on doing it. But this was 20 years ago, when even The Gap sold ties.
Now my tastes have changed where I would only wear a tie with a suit (not with khakis, and not without a jacket), but I probably don’t have to put on a suit more than twice a year. Or: if I’m not going to do something right, I’m not going to do it at all – except that I don’t even have to do it.
I wouldn’t mind seeing things swing back the other way, though, if only because casual shirts might improve along with it, and we’d see an end to these god-forsaken, plug-ugly plaids they’ve been pushing on us for the past several years.
And snaps instead of buttons!? What the fuck, am I going to a steak buffet and/or porn shoot 40 years ago?
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Back in the early 80’s I liked to wear vintage skinny ties with unusual patterns going out. I would peruse thrift stores for them. When my son started his HS with the dress code and I said I had ties for him, he just rolled his eyes. Then they popped out when he saw them!
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Going back to soldering (sort of), for me it was markers. When a motherboard passed a test, we’d mark the edge with a certain color, e.g. orange for in-circuit testing. If I wore a white tee shirt then I’d invariably end up with orange marks somewhere on it, no matter how careful I’d been. We had ESD smocks that we weren’t required to wear, but I did just so that I’d quit going through white shirts.
I talk a big game about dressing nice, but it’s usually business casual to be honest. But you are not alone, I like ties too. The only thing I despise is that since I am 6’2" I can’t find a tie long enough to do a full Windsor knot. So I have to do a half Windsor so I don’t look like a giant with a tiny tie. But then it’s always crooked.
And don’t get me started on neck sizes.
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That used to be a running joke on Letterman’s show, “What’s Hal Wearing?” They’d go back to the control room and the director always had a blue oxford and chinos.
Ugh.
Not that I wear ties any more, hasn’t been expected at work in 15 years, but it was always a full Windsor. Of course, I’m not 6’2"…
I would happily wear shirt and tie though, not a big fan of polo shirts, but I got fed up of the ‘going for a job interview?’ questions when I dressed up a bit.
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Or even better, “what, you gotta go to court?”
I learned to just say “what, I gotta have a reason?”
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I only like silk ties, and a silk tie is stronger than my neck. Basically a really nice tie says you are willing to wear your own death noose - it’s a social status claim, or a measure of respect.
Social status - you don’t work around powerful machinery, or animals, or even with your hands, and you are protected from anyone who might dare to yank your tie hard enough to kill you.
Measure of respect - I will wear a noose to your funeral or wedding, because my feelings for you are more powerful than my instincts for self preservation.
(You can hack the system by modifying a super-nice tie into a breakaway using cotton thread and elastic.)
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My problem is never the tie. My problem is that it’s damned near impossible for me to find a shirt with a collar that’s large enough that it doesn’t feel like my eyes are bulging out, without having a chest and sleeves so large that it looks like I’m wearing a smock from elementary school art class.
I honestly like wearing collared shirts and ties. I look good in a collared shirt and tie. However, I think I need to shell out the cash and have shirts specifically made for me so that I can look good without feeling like I’m wearing a boa (constrictor, not feather) around my neck.
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I can’t even wear button up shirts if they are fitted unless they are tailored at this point. T-shirts and loose casual button ups work. It turns out that the kind of shirts you wear with suits have an expected body shape that not everyone conforms to.
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You might want to try a fancier knot like a triangle knot or an eldritch knot. Counterintuitively, because the knot takes more steps to tie, you can just tuck the bit that’s left at the end up behind the neck of the tie under the collar. I find the hardest part is convincing my brain to start with the thick end shorter than I’ll eventually want it because I invariably end up pulling more down as I go through the steps. I’m 6’1", so similar boat.
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Yup, they seem to make them for very slim people or very not slim people, but never just not very slim people 
I’ve strategically cultivated a good relationship with my tailor, which is especially useful since about half my stuff is vintage and needs to adjusted. He’s worked miracles on suit jackets. I scored a Harris Tweed sports coat in Edinburgh last year and am currently working to hit my target weight so he can fit it optimally to me. Then, no true Scotsman immunity for life!
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I lift weights (was a powerlifter a few years ago before my injury) but I’m also 45 with a little bit of a gut so…a bad combination. Every shirt that isn’t tailored for a suit is a tent.
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Probably not, but to me wearing a shirt and tie feels like getting in a Hefty bag and having the drawstring cinched around my neck.
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I’ve devolved in dress style to a skate punk in California as I’ve aged. I just wear shorts and t-shirts now. I used to wear khakis and dress shirts when younger.
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Ha, like those Empire waist dresses on women - they make pretty much everybody look like they are pregnant.
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