“Pocket squares should never match your tie, only complement it”
I get “matching” means same or similar color and style, but what does “complementing” means? How do socks complement your pants?
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It means they work well together or enhance one another.
In colour theory in particular, complementary colours are pairs of colours with directly opposing hues. Blue and yellow for instance. These colour combinations tend to work well.
In the sense you’ve encountered though its broader and means any colours that go together even if not directly opposite.
In that context they mean to use the color that is on the opposite side of the color wheel (or if you’re getting fancy use tritone matching, but really just stick to 2-color matching to start with).
General rule to remember if you don’t want to bust out your color wheel:
* Red and green compliment one another
* Blue and orange compliment one another
* Purple and yellow compliment one another
The other thing to remember though, is to make at least one of them less vibrant, if not sticking to a more muted palette all together. Two bright colors and you look goofy. But putting a fire engine red tie against an olive green shirt, that’s good.
Canary Yellow and Royal Purple are gonna be too loud and bright together, but if you make the yellow a dark gold it works fine, similarly if you make the purple a lavender.
Blue/Orange, the orange is usually the harsher color, and blue is naturally pretty mellow, so this works out pretty well without much effort, but if you have like a deep ocean blue and then a bright orange, maybe get a navy shirt for that orange tie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementary_colors
Now that the obvious word association is out of the way, in fashion the term is used in a broader sense of colors, textures, and elements.
One might be striped while another is plain. One is blue while the other is gray. One is shiny while the other is matte.
So the phrase means the two items shouldn’t be made of the exact same fabric(cut from the same cloth), but they should be coordinated.
Example: Neil deGrasse Tyson is wearing a black-blue tie with bright cartoony planets on it. His pocket square can be a simple dark gray-blue fabric with a hint of texture and sheen, but that decision also has to coordinate with his shirt, vest, and jacket, which are a more subdued gray tweed and white cotton.
The nicer shiny fabric makes the pocket square stand out from his jacket and vest, while bringing in some blue from the tie and not trying to compete with the tie. I’m describing one of his suits from a Colbert LSSC appearance BTW.
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