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Tu corbata es nueva, pero la de tu hermano es muy vieja.

Tu corbata es nueva, pero la de tu hermano es muy vieja.
Your tie is new, but your brother's is very old.
From Lesson 139:Avoiding repetition (el de, la de, los de, las de)·Spanish (Latin America)

Questions & Answers about Tu corbata es nueva, pero la de tu hermano es muy vieja.

Why do we say la de tu hermano instead of just translating 'your brother's'?
Spanish doesn't use an apostrophe 's' ('s) for possession. To say 'your brother's tie', you normally say 'the tie of your brother' (la corbata de tu hermano). To avoid repeating the word corbata, we drop it and just use la de tu hermano, which translates literally to 'the one of your brother'.
Since the brother is male, shouldn't it be el de instead of la de?
No, because the article always matches the item being owned, not the owner. Here, la replaces la corbata (the tie), which is feminine. The fact that the brother is masculine doesn't change the gender of his tie.
Why is the word vieja feminine if the closest noun is hermano (brother)?
The adjective vieja (old) is describing the brother's tie, not the brother himself. Because the hidden subject of the second half of the sentence is la corbata (feminine), the adjective must be feminine to match it.
Why doesn't the word tu have an accent mark in this sentence?
The word tu without an accent means 'your' (as in tu corbata or tu hermano). If it had an accent mark (tú), it would mean the subject pronoun 'you', which wouldn't make sense here.

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