Patent Application
20150359299
For as long as people have worn neckties, they have been faced with the problem of neckties moving in unintended ways. When a wearer leans forward for hand washing or to reach for food, the necktie falls forward away from the wearer's body and risks getting soiled. The ideal position for a necktie is to be centered on the wearer's body, but the necktie will frequently move left or right of center as the wearer moves around. These necktie displacements from their original and intended position result in a less professional appearance. They also risk permanently damaging the necktie should it come in contact with food or a liquid.
To avoid these problems, various methods and devices for keeping a necktie in place have been used. Most of these involve using a device to anchor the necktie to the wearer's shirt. The devices commonly involve chains, pins, clasps, and other ways of holding the hanging end of the necktie close to the shirt. A common disadvantage of these methods is that they risk damaging the necktie. Pins and other devices punch a hole through the fabric of the necktie, resulting in at least small initial damage to the tie and potentially ruining the necktie fabric over time through stretching and tearing the fabric through the creation and use of multiple holes. Tie bars also have been used to clamp the necktie and shirt together, and tie chains have been used to hold the tie against the shirt. These devices have the disadvantages of being quite noticeable and potentially wearing out the fabric of the areas of the necktie and shirt where each comes in contact with the device.
More recently, devices have been created that go between the necktie and the shirt. These devices hold the necktie in place by insertion through the space between the back of a necktie and a loose strip of fabric, such as a keeper loop or a label, commonly found on the back of a necktie. The inserted device is then connected to two buttons on the shirt by having slots, holes, or other attachment parts located at the ends of the device fit between the buttons and the shirt, occupying the same space between the buttons and the shirt that is occupied by the threads connecting each button and the shirt. This placement of the device between the tie and shirt allows it to be hidden from sight from most angles of viewing the necktie's wearer. These hidden devices have multiple advantages over other necktie retaining devices. Most basically, the hidden devices allow the necktie greater prominence because there is not a pin, chain, bar, or other ornamental piece covering part of the tie. Also, because these tie retaining devices are hidden, the material they are made from does not have to be aesthetically pleasing. This material instead can be chosen solely for its practical qualities, such as being cheap or durable. Additionally, the only parts of the shirt and necktie that might experience wear from these hidden devices are the buttons on the shirt and loops on the back of the necktie. These items can easily and cheaply be re-sown onto the shirt or necktie or instead replaced entirely.
However, these hidden tie retaining devices still have a significant limitation. No matter how they connect to the buttons, each device is designed to work with shirts that have a specific spacing distance between the buttons. If the buttons are spaced too closely together, either the device's button attachment parts are too far apart to fit behind the buttons or the device as a whole must bow outward horizontally to reduce the vertical distance between the device's button attachment parts. If the device bows outward horizontally, the part of the device fitting through a loop on the back of the necktie will push the necktie away from the shirt, defeating the purpose of the device to hold the necktie securely against the shirt.
Some of these hidden tie retaining devices have closed ends that contain holes for slipping over a button, similar to the way the closed holes on one side of a dress shirt slip over the buttons on the other side of the shirt. An example of this type of device is U.S. Pat. No. 5,245,708 to Campelia et al (1993). In contrast, the device in U.S. Pat. No. 5,337,457 to Chennault (1995) has semi-closed ends that each contain an access slot for slipping the button thread into and out of a retaining slot for securing the button. All these devices can only accommodate shirts that have buttons spaced apart within a narrow range of button spacing distances. Because the button attachment parts used to secure the buttons are closed or semi-closed, buttons spaced much closer together than the distance between the device's button attachment parts cannot fit into the device's button attachment parts without significantly bending the device, causing the necktie to deflect horizontally outward from the wearer.
The present invention is a hidden universal necktie retaining device. The necktie retaining device is hidden because it fits between the wearer's shirt and necktie. It is inserted through the loop on the back of a necktie and then is secured by fitting the device's two ends behind two buttons on a shirt by inserting the thread connecting each button to the shirt into a slot. It is universal because it is designed to work with almost all shirts, including shirts designed for men, women, or children, by accommodating a large range of different shirt button spacings. It does this by having long, vertically-oriented open slots at each end of the device, which in a preferred embodiment of the invention accommodate shirts with buttons spaced anywhere from 1.5 inches to 4.5 inches apart.
Referring now to the invention in more detail,
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The long slots depicted in
While the present invention has been related in terms of the foregoing embodiment, those skilled in the art will recognize that the invention is not limited to the embodiment described. The present invention can be practiced with modification and alteration within the spirit and scope of the foregoing description. Thus, the description is to be regarded as illustrative instead of as restrictive on the present invention.
