Yes, we know they’re back (and for some of us they never went away). It seems everybody from college grads to corporate swells have discovered this nifty accessory. Although we’re all for smart dressing, we cannot endorse this trend wholeheartedly for one simple reason: pocket square abuse is rampant, especially in the media, where anchors like Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly commit the most heinous of sartorial crimes: they match their pocket squares with their ties, a tell-tale sign of the amateur.

It is our informed opinion that the pattern of your pocket square should not replicate the pattern in your tie. It should serve instead as a complement to it.

This of course is not easy to do and there are no simple tips to help you achieve sartorial harmony in this area, except for maybe one: when you’re contrasting patterns in your shirt, tie, and pocket square, make sure they are all in the same tonal range—i.e., they should all be of more or less the same color intensity.

But even this dictate can be tweaked to good effect. Andre Benjamin and Cedric The Entertainer do it all the time. But one must know the ground rules before one can venture beyond them or else you end up looking like all those TV anchors—children set loose in a fancy menswear store.