Bowtie #72

Pirate Theme Week Tie #1

Moving on, for the time being, from Dolly theme week, we are now in the start of Pirate theme week, in celebration of Talk Like a Pirate Day, which is this weekend.

I will admit that this honoring of the holiday in this way comes from the fact that I found plenty of pirate fabric more than it does from an actual desire to participate in the holiday. In any case, I'm happy we're here with these ties.

The first side of this tie may seem like a stretch for pirate week, but it looks to me like one of the head scarfs that a classic Disney pirate would wear. In fact, when you view it in person, it even has a bit of a shimmer or gloss to it, making it look more like silk than cotton. It is 100% cotton though.

These stripes, for this purpose, were a great coincidence in discovery, as I found them at the same time as the flag fabric. I think about that a lot, how this project would have differed if I had started it in any other year. Fabric designs rotate far more often than I would have previously assumed, and I expect that if I continued on with this project into the next year, I would not be at a loss for swatch.

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The second side here has flags, and could be used for other celebrations, including flag day, so it has some real utility. Of course, we are here because the skull and crossed bones and the skull and crossed sabers flags represent nearly a quarter of the flag types, making pirates the best-represented flag group here.

I do not know the validity of any of these other flags. One looks close to the Union Jack, but my vexillology knowledge (vexillowledge) is insufficient enough to tell me how it differs. Is it the Aussie flag? Sooooo many flags are based off of the Union Jack, and it itself is already based on three other flags, so there's no telling which is the chicken or egg here without a dive into a wiki.

As an aside, but relevant to the first side of this tie, much of what we have for the visual language of what a 17th-century seafaring pirate looks like comes from the book Treasure Island and Disney's original film adaptation of it (not the Muppet one that came many years later). It is worth looking into if you haven't, but that film is also responsible for establishing the traditional pirate accent, which I think is from Glasgow, but I don't really remember. I may be confusing that with the accent choice that Bill Nighy made in the Pirates of the Caribbean films.

Suffice it to say that what we think of as a "pirate" is inaccurate and often anachronistic.

I wore the sides of this tie on the 15th and 16th of September.