Color and Pattern: Disembodied Voice Edition

[I'm actually in trial all the day of this post, but thanks to the magic of the Internet, I can schedule posts in advance!]

Necessity is the mother of invention.  I had a Sunday client meeting and needed a suit and tie, but I only had this shirt clean, and the client had just seen me wear the tie I usually wear with this shirt.  I only had a few minutes, so I just grabbed my gold tie that has a touch of blue accents and figured that would have to be enough to, uhh, tie it all together.

Then I got to looking at it later.  The blue/gold color combination works passably.  But look at the pattern coordination.  Tiny blue squares on the shirt and the tie, and incrementally larger squares on the tie.  Like doing high-school geometry exercises where you draw similar figures.  I think this is a combo that leverages color as well as pattern.

Another reason I hesitate to adopt any sort of "3-pattern rule."  Does "squares" count as a pattern, or just identical squares?  What if you wore this combo with a windowpane suit, gray with a light-blue stripe?