A Loosening of Ties
By
Willy J. Spat
For over two thousand years -
since at least the Quin dynasty - the necktie (or cravat) has
been the most widely used, and the most multicultural of all phallic
symbols. Worn by the personal guard of
Shih Huang Ti's terracotta army, by the orators of ancient Rome, and by a
succession of dandies, fops, and power dressers throughout history, "the
clothe prick" (As Lord Byron was said to have termed it) appears to be
nearing the end of its unprecedented accessorial reign. The president of IBM, in a recent e‑mail,
announced that the cravat was no longer de rigueur for the once impeccably‑tied
"wing‑tip warriors" of the giant multinational. Gianni Versace's latest book Men Without
Ties is a runaway success. And now,
at the most progressive corporations of New York, Paris, and London, it is
quite permissible for men to appear dressed for business with no trace of silk,
rayon, or polyester about their necks.
What has come undone? Why, after
an unprecedented two‑thousand year reign, has the most useless, and yet
the most fussed over, element of male attire gradually begun to whither in
importance?
The necktie has always been, for
a certain class, a celebrated piece of male equipment. The Chinese soldiers who, in the third
century B.C., oversaw the construction of walls and roads to strengthen the
might of Shih Huang Ti's empire, tied lengths of silk about their necks in
order to set themselves apart as an elite corps. Similarly, the legionnaires of ancient Rome sported knotted
neckcloths, kerchiefs, and even primitive versions of the four‑in‑hand
under their armour. The ties were a
mark of allegiance, wealth, and belonging at a time when cloth was hard enough
to come by for clothes, never mind for articles of gratuitous adornment. They told others, both inside and outside
the elite, that the bearers of the neckpieces were the people who mattered -
the people who belonged.
Not all of antiquity was so
easily seduced by such immodest pluming.
The Roman public generally considered the covering of the neck with
anything but the toga or the hand beneath the dignity of men and citizens. Many orators protested, claiming that the
necktie was not just an article of fashion, that it actually served a purpose:
keeping the throat warm to better protect the voice. This in turn led to a counter‑charge by some of the
greatest orators of the day - Horace, Seneca, and Quintilian -
that neckcloths were the mark of sickly or effeminate men, and not the pieces
of virile equipment some urban imitators of legionnaires might have hoped.
It was almost as though the
suspicion that the necktie was just a trifle outré influenced the
neckwear wave through to the Renaissance.
Those who had the money, and who were not out crusading in the Holy
Lands with proto‑regimental colours tied around their necks, went for the
most elaborate and frilly of neckpieces in their more amorous crusades. French courtly poet Eustache Deschamps
celebrated dressing to kill in 1380 with the immortal line "faites
restraindre sa cravate" (pull his cravat tighter).
The wealth and power detained by
prosperous seventeenth‑century silk‑stockinged gentlemen allowed
them to scorn many common opinions concerning lace ruffs. They indulged their tastes for masculine
display by virtually any means possible.
In fact, so excessive were the ruffs and frills of Queen Elizabeth's
courtiers, that Oliver Cromwell and his crop‑haired Model Army made the
self‑indulgent Royalist style a point of moral and political controversy. The stern lines of broad linen neckwear
entirely replaced decadent lace during the English Civil War of 1642‑1649.
While the violent austerity of
the Roundheads somewhat checked the popularity of ties in England, the lace
cravat flourished on the continent, still very much in Royal favour. Almost as though to spite Cromwell,
fashionable men on the continent were sporting their hair longer and curlier,
making the round‑the‑neck ruffs of the Elizabethan court difficult
to wear. Instead, drooping neckties
became the style, and Charles II, in exile at the court of Louis XIII,
displayed the same enthusiasm as his French hosts for the dangling, ornate
appurtenances. By the time he returned
to England, and the necks of most of the revolutionary Roundheads had been
severed, Charles was wearing the hottest of men's fashion accessories: the lace
cravat.
Although Italian and Belgian
lace were acknowledged as the last word in fashionable seventeenth‑century
business attire, import duties and restrictions made keeping abreast of the
latest trends in neckwear very expensive, if not entirely illegal. Dogs dressed in lace, and covered with false
coats, were used to smuggle lace across borders. Once formed into neckties for the gentleman fashion‑plates
of the day, the most elegant of lace ties could cost as much as thirty‑six
English pounds - at a time when a good salary
amounted to only a few pounds a year.
Because of the fortunes
involved, Italian and Belgian lace styles were being imitated all over Europe
by the 1660's. The extremely heavy and
robust Venetian lace style was a particular favourite amongst the manliest
courtiers, and King Louis XIV employed a cravitier for the express
purpose of tying his unwieldy lace into a neckpiece. The less well endowed had to resort to cheaper expedients to keep
their ends up, and in 1669 the master caver Grinling Gibbons sculpted an
extraordinarily detailed - and very stiff -
mock Venetian lace cravat from solid wood.
Others, less skilled with the blade, adopted the artifice of supporting
their masculine equipment with coloured ribbons.
The ribbons supporting heavy
lace cravats spawned their own fads and imitations, so that by 1688,
"cravatts" were described by the Englishman Randle Holme as an:
"...adornment for the neck being nothing else but a long Towel put about
the Collar, and so tyed before with a Bow knot, this is the Original of all
Such Wearing: but now by the Art of Invention of the Seamsters, there is so many
new ways of making them, that it would be a Task to name them, much more to
describe them." And by the end of
the seventeenth century, whether gentlemen were gathered in London or New York
it was expected that they would display both their station and their wealth by
some sort of thing hanging from their necks.
The eighteenth century brought
unprecedented innovation in neckwear.
The Steinkirk, a loosely wrapped scarf‑like tie worn with the
dangling end chastely tucked or pinned to the breast, began to take precedence
over the lace cravat in the early part of the century. So popular was the style, that women were
soon attracted to wearing the more demure version of the necktie, only in more
lively colours than the gent's basic white.
By the middle of the century, the feminine interlopers, in their crimson
Steinkirks, had prompted tough young bucks to retrench their neckwear styles in
something altogether more virile: the stock.
The stock was the most erect
neckwear ever developed. It was
especially designed for foot‑soldiers in France and Germany in order to
encourage the martial appearance of turgid necks and thrusting chins. The stock also had the effect of increasing
blood flow to the face, giving soldiers a ruddy, healthful appearance. In fact, the effect of the stock was
anything but healthful, as the officers obliged the men to tighten their stocks
to the point that "caused the eyes almost to start from their spheres, and
gave the wearers a supernatural appearance, often producing vertigo and faintings,
or at least bleedings at the nose."
The excess of stiffness made it impossible for the soldiers to face left
or right, never mind to stoop or to fight.
And these constraining effects were rendered even more severe as sparse
military budgets ensured that the stocks came in only one size. However, the stock, unlike the cravat, did
not have to be tied, and its horsehair, whale‑ bone, pig‑bristle,
card, pasteboard, or wooden frame could be covered and recovered with satins,
linens, cottons, muslins, silks, or calicos as the latest fads dictated. Not only that, it was a practical military
style, since it showed dirt less than the Steinkirk.
As with the lace ruffs and
millstone collars of nearly a century before, the stiff reign of the stock was
gradually softened by changing men's hairstyles. Republican ideas were spreading as the eighteenth century
progressed, and the trends were toward shorter and shorter hair. The most fashionable men began sporting a
simple pigtail instead of a wig, with the trailing locks often tied or
decorated with black ribbons. The long
ribbons came to be fastened around the neck with a knot in front and the free
ends dangling over the chest. This
simple expedient led to the inevitable imitations and innovations, with coloured
and multiple ribbons soon taking over from the basic black solitaire.
Royalty and landed gentry
continued to elaborate their neckwear, to the point that a club of English
dandies, called the Macaronis, dedicated themselves to reviving the frilly lace
excesses of centuries past. In 1776, The
Town and Country Magazine described the Macaroni as a "most ridiculous
figure ... Such a figure, essenced and perfumed, with a bunch of lace sticking
out under its chin, puzzles the common passenger to determine the thing's
sex." With revolution in the air
on both sides of the Atlantic, such effeminate excesses could not go
unchallenged by real men for very long, and soon plain handkerchiefs, the very
antithesis of frilly lace, were being tied into a distinctive common man's
neckwear: the bandanna.
For working‑class
Europeans, the bandanna at last provided a mark of masculine respectability at
an affordable price. Of brightly
coloured and robust material, the bandanna did not easily show the dirt, and
was quite washable when it did. In
addition, the material could be used to form a basket, lead an animal, or mop
the sweat from a working brow when not being used to project the owner's
dignity. Prohibited in England by the
Calico Acts of 1700 and 1702, the lowly bandanna even acquired something of the
cachet of the forbidden, as well as another name -
"the Kingsman" for the King's man or customs officer who would
normally seize the forbidden cloth.
Soon, however, European industrialists began to cash in on the craze,
and knock‑offs of the Bengali silk prints were being manufactured at
home. Over the water, in North America,
the cotton bandanna became an extremely popular and affordable common‑sense
form of neckwear for those colonists who could not wholly abandon the urbane
fashions of the Old Countries.
As interest in the bandanna
necktie became ever more general, the time‑worn urge of a certain power
elite to distinguish themselves from common men soon provoked the flourishing
of yet another style of neckwear: the Incroyable neckcloth. Partisan politics were again at the root of
fashion, and the Incroyables - literally the Unbelievables -
were a dandy group of young French nonconformists who expressed sympathy with
Republican ideals by revolutionary sartorial excesses. They wore strange cravats of an almost
inconceivable size: "The shirt collar rose to the sides of the ears, and
the top of the cravat covered the mouth and the lower part of the nose, so that
the face (with the exception of the nose) was concealed by the cravat and a
forest of whiskers; these rose on each side of the hair, which was combed down
over the eyes. In this costume, the elegans
bore a greater resemblance to beasts then men, and the fashion gave rise to
many laughable caricatures. They were
compelled to look straight before them, as the head could only be turned by the
general consent of all the members, and the tout ensemble was that of an
unfinished statue." Royalists
countered the excesses of the Incroyables with more sober green
neckcloths, which in turn prompted even more extravagance on the part of the
Republicans: two sheets of muslin, one white and one black, wrapped around the
neck, chin, and face, finished with floppy bows drooped across the shoulders.
Despite the pretensions of the
French Incroyables and their affected imitators, it was gradually the
lowly bandanna that solidified its position as the neckwear of choice with the
fashionable men about town.
Instrumental in the establishment of this relatively sober, practical,
and easy‑to‑tie neckcloth was the most famous pugilist of the early
nineteenth century: Jem Belcher.
Belcher, of humble origins, nearly always appeared with a blue silk
peacock‑eyed bandanna, knotted suavely about the neck. Anxious to associate their own male prowess
with the cock of the walk, fashionable young bucks and bloods of the day took
to wearing the Belcher neckcloth with almost monotonous rigidity.
Into this stylishly uninspired
and politically uncertain age came the figure of the archetypical gentleman:
George Bryan "Beau" Brummell.
Brummell offered self‑respect and belonging to men who could no
longer count on the ascendancy of the nobility in the face of a growing middle
class and an increasingly discontent working class. Rather than doing this by proposing yet another excessive
neckwear style, Beau did it by offering all men the opportunity to be
gentlemen. According to Beau,
regardless of one's income, breeding, or education, one became a gentleman by
displaying simple, sombre dress - together with one firm necktie.
In his advocacy of the
straightforward, clean line of men's dress, Beau Brummell single-handedly
launched the one‑hundred and fifty year reign of the clean shirt‑and‑tie
mentality. A blue coat, a buff waistcoat
and pantaloons, together with black boots could, and should, be worn by anyone
with pretensions to being well dressed.
The more simple and uniform a man's general attire, the better, insisted
Beau. "Gentlemen are known for
their discretion and lack of vulgar show," said he. But when it came to the thing around the
neck, men of distinction stepped away from the off‑the‑rack
mentality, and expressed their individuality in the shape, size, and stiffness
of the hanging thing.
Beau himself was known for a
particularly neat, sensible, and well‑starched cravat, which he changed
as many as three times daily. Exactly
how he knotted the thing was the secret of his boudoir, where Beau spent as
long as necessary to arrange his linen. The Prince Regent, curious to study the cravat‑knotting
prowess of Brummell, once spent an entire morning trying to emulate the refined
technique of the arbiter of English elegance.
Poets satirized the rite:
My neckcloth of course, forms my principal care,
For by that we criterions of elegance swear,
And costs me, each morning, some hours of flurry,
To make it appear to be tied in a hurry.
But the rest of the gentile
Anglophone world furiously aped Brummell's dandyism.
The crazed English attention to
neckwear was not without a political dimension. Across the channel, Napoleon was overrunning Europe wearing a
mere black stock, while the majority of gentile Frenchmen were still sporting
lace cravats. By their firmer and more
erect neckwear, the English were in fact expressing their martial superiority
over the French. On the day of the
battle of Waterloo, The Duke of Wellington (nicknamed "the Dandy" by
his soldiers) took to the field of battle in an immaculate, and quite stiff,
cravat. Napoleon, perhaps oblivious to
the strategic importance of power dressing, exchanged his usual black stock for
a flowing white handkerchief, tied in a bow about his neck. Wellington, after Napoleon's defeat at
Waterloo, was fond of remarking "The history of a battle is not unlike the
history of a ball."
With the end of the Napoleonic
Wars, the restrained and gentlemanly conservatism of the Brummell cravat fell
from favour nearly as quickly as the Beau himself. There was an eruption of neckwear styles as the once unchallenged
arbiter of refined English elegance was forced to flee to France to escape his
creditors. Trades, clubs, and bands of
young men astride powerful stallions all developed their own styles of
neckwear, christening them with names such as The Mathematical, The Horse
Collar, The Trone d'Amour, and the now familiar Four‑in‑Hand. So numerous and complicated became the
styles, that works such as Neckclothitania began to appear in order to
instruct young men in the art of choosing and tying ties. Said the French writer Stendhal after
travelling in tie‑crazed England "La mode chez eux n'est pas un
plaisir, mais un devoir" (Fashion in their country is not a pleasure, but
a duty.)
THE FOUR‑IN‑HAND
KNOT Long and straight - to complement
a standard shirt collar 1 Start with the wide end of your tie on your right hand and extending
12 in or 30 cm below the narrow end. 2 Cross the wide end over the narrow end and turn back underneath. 3 Continue around, passing the wide end across the front of the narrow
end once more. 4 Pass the wide end through the neck‑loop, and holding front of
the knot loose with the index finger, pass the wide end down through the loop
in front. 5 Remove index finger and tighten the knot carefully. Draw the knot tight to collar by holding
the narrow end of the tie and sliding the knot.
|
But the fashion rage was not
confined to England. Private lessons in
the art of tying the tie were being given in France by a certain Stefano
Demarelli. Books on the subject
proliferated in all the European languages, often published under such comical
pen‑names as Baron Starch and General Lepale. Dr Véron, the physician, politician, and founder of the
prestigious Revue de Paris, was in the habit of wearing such
extraordinary neckties that his private correspondence was sometimes addressed
"À Monsieur Véron, dans sa cravate, Paris" (To: Mr Véron, In His Tie,
Paris). Even the great French novelist
Honoré de Balzac was said to have penned a number of works on this most
fashionable of subjects, relating how pistol shots and sabre cuts had been stopped
cold by well‑starched ties. To dry
Balzac, "the greatest insult that can be offered to a man ... is to seize
him by the cravat; in this case, blood only can wash out the stain upon the
honour of either party."
While the necktie was being
taken to ridiculous excess by some, it was for most men "the criterion by
which the rank of the wearer may be at once distinguished, and it is of itself ‘a
letter of introduction’." Men of standing were expected to display
their place in the hierarchy by means of an appropriately firm and ostentatious
tie. In the male establishment, only
artists could get away with a dishevelled look: Lord Byron wore no tie, even
though there were a number of neckwear styles named after him. Perhaps, like Balzac, he held "that the
least constraint of the body has a corresponding effect in the mind, and ... a
tight Cravat will cramp the imagination."
With the rising of the middle
class through the later nineteenth century, neckwear again became sober and
practical. The fallen icons of
excessive style came to be viewed with dispassionate objectivity, as the great
English novelist William Thackeray demonstrated in his portrait of George IV:
"I try to take him to pieces, and find silk stocking, paddings, stays, a
coat with frogs and a fur collar, a star and blue ribbon, a pocket handkerchief
prodigiously scented, one of Turufitt's best nutty‑brown wigs reeking
with oil, a set of teeth and a huge black stock, underwaistcoats, more
underwaistcoats, and then nothing."
The professionals, the higher tradesmen, and the businessmen who
increasingly detained social power quite simply had no time for the ridiculous
extravagances of the idle rich. The
height of male fashion became, once again, the quiet, conventional Brummellian
tie, with the elaborate and colourful excesses in neckwear being left to
tasteless pretenders.
Yet as the century wore on, the
pretenders began to move into positions of power and influence, and were not
slow to express their differing origins by means of the neckpiece. Charles Dickens, the son of a bankrupt
government clerk, indulged his flamboyant tastes for scarlet, green, purple,
striped, and even embroidered neckties as he toured Europe and America at the
height of his literary fame. Some, such
as the Scottish writer Peter Buchan, clung to the waning vestiges of
gentlemanly precedence, and dismissed all such attempts at sartorial
Republicanism: "The title of
Gentleman is now commonly given to all those that distinguish themselves from
the common sort of people ... Indeed, almost at all times, among the vulgar a
suit of fine clothes never fails of having the desired effect of bestowing on
its wearer the name of Gentleman, without any other qualification whatsoever...
To the tailor and barber alone, hundreds are indebted for the title of
Gentleman." But the necktie had
become just that: an accessible, affordable, and reasonably practical mark of
belonging to a burgeoning power class.
It wasn't long before women
began to long for the dangling display of masculine equality. In 1851, Mrs Amelia Bloomer of the Rational
Dress Movement was suggesting that not only should Victorian ladies shed their
corsets, crinolines, and voluminous skirts to adopt more practical trouser‑like
bloomers, they should take up the wearing of the tie, as Mrs Bloomer did
herself.
Widespread industrialization,
the repeal of the English Corn Laws, and the effects of global trade led to the
increasing availability and affordability of a wide variety of material for
neckties. Furthermore, the concentration
of wealth in Europe and the Americas gave rise to leisure activities and sports
of all kinds. Dress evolved hand in
glove with changing masculine activities, and before long, ties were developed
to suit the sporting gent. Allowing for
vigorous movement without being displaced or unravelling, the sporting ties the
1870s, tied with four‑in‑hands over low collars, closely resembled
the ubiquitous business ties of today.
Such an easy, robust style of neckwear
lent itself to mass production, and as the century drew to a close, sweatshops
and homeworkers all over the world were cranking out a new male uniform. A plenitude of materials and styles became
available: cotton plaids, striped silks, satins, taffeta, wool, and
brocades. There were even ready‑made
ties for those who desired sartorial elegance, but were quite unsure about how
to arrange their neckwear in order to obtain it.
There were some, such as the
editors of The Gentleman's Magazine of Fashion of 1875, who would have
had fashion turn back to the high collars of yester‑year: "Medical
men ascribe many deaths during the past winter to the fashion of low collars
and to gentlemen not being sufficiently protected by their clothing at the
throat and neck." But the shape
of the collar and tie had become standardized, like the cut of most Victorian
middle‑class clothing.
The sheer uniformity of styles
in the machine age prompted extraordinary innovation in the patterns of cloth
used for the necktie, since the accessory had lost not of its ancient role of
setting the wearer apart from others by means of class distinction,
professional status, or other pretensions.
Foremost amongst these ostentatious ties were club, school, and
regimental neckwear, which distinguished by means of a studied pattern or
colour, as well as by association with a well‑known or well‑respected
institution. Gaudy colours and ready‑made
ties were still the exclusive preserve of the poor, ill‑informed, or
those lacking in taste. Legions of self‑styled
fashion writers sprung up, prepared to advise the public on this increasingly
complicated symbology of the necktie.
Opined a fashion writer called "The Major": "Of course,
no gentleman ever does wear a made‑up tie, and doesn't want the credit of
wearing one. I consider it the duty of
every father to tell his son this on leaving school; it would save him a great
deal of heart‑burning and anxiety in after life."
In 1900, in The
Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud felt the urge to elucidate another
aspect of the necktie's symbology. He
wrote: "In men's dreams a necktie often appears as a symbol for the
penis. No doubt this is not only because
neckties are long, dependent objects and peculiar to men, but also because they
can be chosen according to taste - a liberty that, in the case of
the object symbolized, is forbidden by Nature.
Men who make use of this symbol in dreams are often very extravagant in
ties in real life and own whole collections of them." No doubt Freud was only making explicit what
had been at the back of everybody's mind for quite some time, and yet his overt
analysis did nothing to check the necktie's popularity. In fact, perhaps envious of such a
ubiquitous form of menswear, sporting women began to wear the hanging
thing. It was reasoned that a staid and
well‑tied male fashion accessory around the neck would counterbalance the
evident feminine provocativeness of knickerbocker suits, Norfolk bodices and
culotte skirts which women were beginning to wear in order to indulge in sports
such as horseback riding, skating, sailing, and playing tennis.
The Great War was a great
leveller of men as well as pretensions, and the necktie lost something of its
cachet and code of class in the roaring twenties. Money, rather than breeding, was more than ever the new measure,
and most of the latest and most sought‑ after fashions could be had for
cold cash, rather than by way of association with some exclusive
organization. Fashion enterprises
catered to the new social order, creating a welter of new styles, as well as
some new methods of neckwear production.
Until 1924, neckties were cut
straight down the piece of material, making them inelastic, and prone to
premature wear. Jesse Langsdorf, an
American tailor, discovered that by cutting the tie on the bias of the cloth,
the tie would be much more resilient and long‑ wearing. Cut slightly off
bias, the tie would pull off‑centre and fall crookedly, but if cut at
exactly 45 degrees, the aprons of the tie would drape elegantly, straight down
from the knot. Langsdorf made some
other modifications in the construction of the tie, and patented the process
under the trade name Resilio. Rights to
the revolutionary tie‑ construction method were later sold to
manufacturers all over the world, and it is by Langsdorf's method that most
good quality ties are made today.
THE WINDSOR KNOT Wide and triangular - for wide‑spread
shirt collars 1 Start with the wide end of your tie on your right hand and extending 12
in or 30 cm below the narrow end. 2 Cross the wide end over the narrow end and bring the wide end up
through the neck loop. 3 Bring the wide end down, around and behind the narrow end, and then
up on your right hand. 4 Bring the wide end down through the neck loop and cross it at right
angles over the narrow end. 5 Turn and pass through the neck loop again, and complete by slipping
through the knot in front. Then
tighten the knot firmly against the collar. THE HALF‑WINDSOR KNOT Medium symmetrical triangle - for standard
shirt collars 1 Start with the wide end of your tie on your right hand and extending
12 in or 30 cm below the narrow end. 2 Cross the wide end over the narrow end and turn it back underneath. 3 Bring the wide end up and turn it down through the neck loop. 4 Pass the wide end around the front from left to right, then up
through the neck loop, and down through the knot in front. Then tighten the knot carefully against
the collar.
|
Apart from construction
techniques, early twentieth‑century designers spawned necktie fashions
that were globally disseminated as necktie fashions had never been before.
Films and newsreels carried the images of the most fashionable neckpieces to
the far corners of the earth, so that the neckwear styles of Noel Coward, Fred
Astaire, and Bing Crosby were scrupulously and immediately imitated worldwide. Even Edward VIII, disgraced by his 1930's
affair with the soon‑to‑be‑divorced American Wallis Simpson,
spawned a universal necktie fashion, although under his abdicant name: The Duke
of Windsor.
Women also had a hand in
influencing necktie styles during the post‑war period. Grieving widows with little hope of finding
a new man draped themselves in sexless skirt suits, complemented by brogues and
a tie. Athletic women, and those
influenced by Radclyffe Hall's egregious lesbian novel The Well of
Loneliness, also wore masculine neckgear.
However, the most marked cross‑dressing fashion of the period came
from the Parisian couturier Jean Patou.
As Chanel's great rival of the 1920s, Patou introduced green, blue,
pink, orange, and black silk scarves, patterned after the works of such cubist
artists as Picasso and Braque. Although
first conceived for women, the patterns were so successful that Patou decided
to offer men's versions in his women's boutique Coin des Sports. Patou's wealthy American clientele bought up
the ties, mostly as gifts for the men who were paying their fashion bills.
Through the Second World War,
despite rationing, the wearing of the necktie continued to be an opportunity
for men to display a personal style and convey important messages to their
peers. Said one stylish young gent,
"I please myself when I buy ties, ditto grey flannels. When I buy a suit or jacket, I set out to
please my fiancée." Another
commented, "I don't like open shirts for games because people who wear
them have sloppy minds." Still others
opted for simple imitation, emulating the silk cravats of Royal Air Force
flyers, or else tartan ties made popular by the Duke of Windsor's Celtic
wartime rags.
Following the Second World War,
men wanted colour, style, and flash to compensate for the drab and kaki styles
that they had had to endure during the war.
The wide, floppy Hawaiian‑print "belly warmer" tie dates
from this period, as do a host of other exuberant necktie styles and
themes. Wartime production was being
redirected to consumer goods, and the gents were being encouraged to snap up
the rampant production of thousands of tie manufacturers weaving a host of new
synthetic materials. Tie‑swapping
clubs formed, and men became collectors of ties. Celebrities of all kinds incited the fad, with Good
Housekeeping reporting: "Guy Lombardo orders his ties in duplicate,
one for in‑ town, one for out.
Frank Sinatra's wardrobe boasts five hundred. Sinatra often gives the tie off his neck to croon‑crazy
friends." Marlon Brando's 1952
string‑tie appearance in Viva Zapata spawned one craze; Warren
Beatty displaying a light tie over a dark shirt in Bonnie and Clyde
spawned another.
While the bright tie styles were
exclusively worn by men, it was in fact the women who had begun to buy ties for
their gents. By the late 'forties,
about seventy percent of ties were being bought by women. Advertisers focused on this Freudian
reversal with such slogans as
"Whatever your dish, Van Heusen has three sizes: small, medium and
WOW!" Women were henceforward to ensure that their men well were hung with
ties.
The booming post‑war
economy created teenagers - a young, restless generation with jobs, money, and
a taste for adventure. Some rebels -
called "Spivs" and "Wide Boys" -
distinguished themselves with ties that were even louder and more crass than
anything yet seen. "Nerds"
took up the opposite conservative and understated styles touted by Good
Grooming Leagues. Still others, who
longed for another time when neckwear was more simple and dignified, called
themselves the New Edwardians, and went for very distinguished and immaculately
knotted silk ties. "Teddy
Boys" or "Teds" in turn took the Edwardian style to a violent
extreme, wearing long, loose jackets with narrow, tight trousers, and very,
very thin ties.
The generation that began
experimenting with neckwear in the 'fifties continued to develop their tastes
in the sixties, with the Beats, the Mods, and the Regency Revivalists all
taking up fantastically different and varied neckwear styles. Lord Lichfield, the dandy Royal
photographer, even went to the extreme of reviving the Incroyable cravat
with a huge bow. Said Lichfield:
"A man doesn't dress for himself.
He dresses to attract the girls....
I have an idea all men dress to be sexy like cock pheasants in the
mating season."
Robert Gieve of Gieves
& Hawkes, London On What Makes a Superlative Tie
First, check that the tie has been cut on the bias in three
sections. You can actually see the grain
of the material if you examine it carefully. Then
look at the reverse side of the tie, at the ends - the British word
for them is the ‘blades,’ while the Americans call them ‘aprons.’ Look
for the bar tacks on both the large and small ends of the tie, and for a
little spring of thread on the small end, which will stretch into the tie
while you're wearing it and prevent the stitching from snapping.
Next, pull the seams very gently to that you can see that the tie has
been stitched by hand, which gives it the maximum resilience. And pull the pocket formed by the tipping - that's the lining
on the tips of the blades - so that you can see it goes well up into the
body of the tie. On a good tie, you
shouldn't be able to see the blanket [interlining].
Finally, pinch up a piece of the shell material on the face of the
largest blade of the tie and check how thick the silk is. Then feel beneath it for the interlining
material, which is known as the ‘blanket.’
Sometimes manufacturers will use very thin, cheap silk and bulk up the
tie by using a heavy blanket - although, of course, a good tie in a delicate
material needs a heavy blanket or a double layer of interlining, too.
Treat your ties well and they will last well. Always smooth them out when you take them
off and then hang them up so that they can return to their natural
shape."
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So numerous and numbing were
necktie styles, that, as the 'sixties grew to a close, there was real confusion,
even amongst the trend setters. Some
believed that fashions would become even more outrageous, with extremes like
Paul McCartney in great hanging kipper ties, and Mick Jagger in dainty Laura
Ashley chiffon mini‑dresses.
Some, such as trendy Texas designer Ramon Torres, believed that the end
was near: "All articles of clothing that only tradition can defend will
disappear. Nineteenth‑century
concepts of ‘elegance’
will crumble - together with the very words or
phrases, written or spoken, which have served so long to describe and sustain
it. Blind Bond Street, resting Rome,
placid Paris, specialized New York - how wide will our ties be in
1980? How tight will we wear them? Will it still be elegant to wear a head
above a stiff white collar or will we have choked it off by then? No.
There will be neither ties nor collars in 1980!"
Most, however did not share
Torres' apocalyptic vision. Pierre
Cardin, inventor of the flowered tie as well as the hugely phallic kipper tie,
felt that neckwear had a future.
"Ties can brighten up a male costume and allow the wearer to
express his personality," said Pierre.
And Douglas Hayward of Saville Row's Hardy Aimes, concurred: "Men
want to wear a tie because it is the only thing that can express their
personality. I don't want to get caught
up in the present scene of accepting anything that's new. It will calm down eventually."
And calm down it did. In 1975, a modern‑day Brummell - the
New York image consultant John Malloy - published a book called Dress
for Success. The book set out in
rigorous detail the modern aesthetic of the necktie. According to Malloy, men who wear neckties are perceived as more
trustworthy, and more financially secure than their unendowed brothers. Consequently, to be successful, men must
take the wearing of the tie seriously.
They must buy their ties themselves, and ensure that the articles are
crafted of silk, imitation silk, wool, or cotton. Their ties should reach the belt buckle, and harmonize with the
width of the jacket lapels. Permissible
patterns are solid plain colours, regimental and club ties, upper‑class
sporting ties, and some patterned ties such as paisleys, plaids, and
Macclesfield silks. Purple must be
avoided under all circumstances.
I have a hankering to go back
to the Orient and discard my necktie - neckties strangle clear
thinking. ‑ Lin Yutang
|
Molly was blunt: "The tie is a symbol of respectability
and responsibility. It communicates to
other people who you are, or reinforces or detracts from their conception of
what you should be. While the most
appropriate tie, worn correctly, naturally cannot insure your success in
business or in life, it certainly can - and should -
give off the right signals to keep you from being regarded as a no‑class
boob."
Fashion designers were quick to
cash in on the necktie's renewed cachet of respectability. It has become a sign of status, wealth, and security
to have about the neck the work of some well‑known European
designers. Men appreciate the positive
image associated with the name of a Cardin or an Yves Saint Laurent, while the
women buyers of men's neckwear are attracted to the exclusivity, glamour, and
luxury of couture. Women are also
becoming susceptible to the allure of designer neckwear for themselves, with
the women's neckwear of Parisian makers such as Hermès enjoying renewed
popularity.
... ties ... make everything
look out of date. ‑ Gianni Versace
|
Why, then, in the face of
renewed interest in the necktie, is IBM untying the knot? The men of IBM offer Byronic responses:
"It helped create a better atmosphere of creativity. The employees don't feel as regimented. They feel more comfortable and in control of
themselves." according Tom Turey, speaking for IBM laboratory
personnel. "If you're comfortable,
you can think better." commented Louis V. Gerstner, the IBM President.
But the answer is not so
straightforward, according to organizational consultant Dr William J. Spat:
"Its been known for a very long time that the necktie is emblematic of a
constricted imagination - Beethoven himself was said to
have worn his neckties loose for that very reason. What IBM has recently understood is that to succeed in very many
businesses today, employees cannot feel constricted -
they have to feel free to innovate and to decide things for themselves. Quite simply, we are surpassing the age when
organizations have to control behaviour in order to succeed. Now they have to foster creativity and
innovation in order to be on top. By
saying explicit to employees ‘You don't have to wear a tie,’ you
are giving them many more options to express themselves and their
judgement. As a management tool, this
can be far more powerful than a whole set of rules and codes just because you
can tell so much more about how employee will act in the absence of imposed
constraints. You're also telling him
that he is going to have to act in the absence of imposed constraints, instead
of expecting to be told what to do all the time"
Continues Dr. Spat: "Those
who think that the necktie is finished just because of IBM, Ford, and all those
informal office days are dead wrong.
Executives won't be going to work with their old ties wrapped around
their loins like Versace's models. They
will be using the necktie as well as host of other accessories to send the
signals that only the tie used to convey.
Look at the growing importance of watches, eyewear, and fragrances for
men. Now these accessories are coming
into play in the workplace. For
example, for a seminar to accountants on organizational renewal, you won't find
me wearing a silk tie wound up to the nth degree: I'll use a certain wristwatch, or a
particular fragrance to send the message that there can be more subtle and
creative ways of influencing people.
For a group of government people, I'll usually stick with the tie, but
something flamboyant, to send the message that, without transgressing the
rules, you can make even a highly regulated context fun, exciting, and to a
certain extent innovative. Where you
have to worry is when everybody is trussed up in a tie looking very serious and
self‑important. Usually that
means that blood flow to the creative and innovative centres is severely
constricted, and that the faculty for independent thinking may have altogether
atrophied."
French/American linguist and semiotician
Dr Christine Nivet is more concerned about the changing phallic role of ties:
"Anglophone culture is sexually very repressive, so it is not all that
surprising that it spawned such a regimented symbol for virility. As Anglophone
women are moving away from neo‑puritan feminist ideologies, and the
Anglophone men are becoming much less control‑oriented, the necktie is
undergoing a kind of parallel crisis.
We see that the men of Versace's Men Without Ties have an
ambiguous sexuality, while at the same time being quite confident. Now, in America, one can sell a perfume
for men. This could not be done five
years ago, just as businessman could not appear efficacious without a great big
dangling tie. Anglophone men are
becoming more sure, and less in need of a big display of themselves. For their part, Anglophone women are
becoming more seductive, so men do not feel that they have to project their
maleness all the time."
Merchants, for their part, are
hedging their bets. Neckwear continues
to be a staple item even in the most trendy menswear boutiques. Despite the loosening of conventions, things
are still rather as Balzac described in the nineteenth century: "When a man of rank makes his entrée
... the most critical and scrutinizing examination will be made of the set of
his Cravat. Should this, unfortunately,
not be correctly or elegantly put on - no further notice will be taken
of him. But if his Cravat is savamment
and elegantly formed ... every one will rise to receive him with most
distinguished marks of respect, will cheerfully resign their seats to him, and
the delighted eyes of all will be fixed on that part of his person which
separates the shoulders from the chin - let him speak downright nonsense, he will be applauded to the
skies."