Mr. Spicer’s ties, on the other hand — like many of those sold under Mr. Trump’s own label — continue to be thick<br />and shiny: “turgid pieces of silk,” as Mr. Sullivan said, in colors like an outlandish lime green or purple covered in polka dots.<br />If anyone recalls Josh Earnest, Mike McCurry or Scott McClellan — White House press secretaries who served Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush — it is assuredly not because they wore unfortunate neckties or suits<br />that looked like a big brother’s ill-fitting hand-me-downs.<br />Mr. Spicer was responding to remarks made by Bill Owens — the father of Chief Petty Officer William Owens, a Navy SEAL team<br />member known as Ryan — who has called for an investigation into the raid in Yemen during which his son was killed.<br />Reportedly at his boss’s urging, Mr. Spicer quickly switched out his original boxy jackets — the ones with shoulders seemingly inspired by either the Balenciaga designer Demna Gvasalia or else by Tom Brady’s sideline coat, with collars<br />that floated around his neck like an oxen yoke — for marginally better fitting models.<br />“Someone evidently had a word with him and he ran out<br />and got a new suit or two, though basically I didn’t think there was anything terribly wrong with what he wore before,” said Nick Sullivan, the style director of Esquire.<br />“If a man’s message is, ‘Yeah, but look at my tie,’ that seems like anything other than the actual message he should be putting across.”<br />A version of this article appears in print on March 5, 2017, on Page ST9 of the New<br />York edition with the headline: Mr. Spicer, a Question: What About the Ties?.<br />Douglas Hand, a professor of fashion law at New York University and an expert on professional dress, said<br />that as messenger of his president’s agenda, the White House press secretary should have an ability to remain invisible.
