Welcome to Year of the Bowtie!

The Year of the Bow Tie is a community-based project focused on the bowtie, a greatly underappreciated garment item!

The event will kick off on August 28, 2024, with a year-long calendar of educational-based events and celebrations culminating on August 28, 2025, with the unveiling of the world's largest bow tie at Old Main on the Eastern Illinois University campus.

Every event will feature the importance of on and off-campus communities coming together to reach shared objectives. Making the world's largest bow tie will take a community of volunteers and team leaders to collect the materials, create a large-scale pattern, sew the materials together, and tie the bow properly. The materials collected are to be recycled and/or repurposed for this purpose.

Fundraising activities will also be incorporated into the year-long activities benefiting an as of yet identified community-based nonprofit organization.

Abraham Lincoln with his iconic bow tie Source: Smithsonian Museum of American History

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Eastern Illinois University is authorized to operate as a postsecondary educational institution by the Illinois Board of Higher Education.

EIU's programs, resources, and facilities are available to all students regardless of race, color, sex, religion, age, national origin, ancestry, marital status, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, and/or gender identity. Discrimination precluded by federal and state statutes is strictly prohibited.