Color Is Hard: Photo-Recycling Edition

Remember this photo from the other day?  If you zoom in on the pinstripe, you'll see it's French blue (the term for the blue of the shirt shown--i.e., the blue of the French flag) alternating with a yellowish cream.

When I build a suit-shirt-tie ensemble, I work in that order.  Start with this suit, for example.  The pinstripe lets me know which shirt color would be ideal.  Here, I could pick blue or cream.  I don't have a cream-colored shirt, but I do have a French blue one.  That was easy. 

Next, I went to Filene's and hunted up and down for a tie which had cream as a dominant color and blue and gray (the suit's dominant color) as secondary colors.  Found it.

If I were going to throw a pocket square into this particular mix, I would go with a cream color because the blue and gray are already well-represented.

It's not adventurous, but this method is 100% guaranteed to make you look put together.