When a Dutch prince in Amsterdam yanked off his tie at the opening of a fashion show last week, proclaiming it “a snake around my neck,” he set off an international fashion furor, generating debate in Internet chatrooms overseas and among apparel experts in the U.S.
Amid the frenzy of the holiday shopping season–in which more than a few desperate shoppers succumb to the gift of last resort–the tumult symbolized a discussion that probably has gone on as long as men have been forced by fashion or the corporate world to lasso their necks.
At the predawn of a new century, the issue is this: Is the male formal fashion staple of the 20th Century really going the way of the powdered wig at the close of the 18th Century? And if so, does this have any deeper meaning for men?
“There’s a rejection of the necktie and all it represents today, particularly for young men,” maintained Ruth Rubinstein, a sociologist at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. “There’s a lot more tenderness today, and we want men to be less formal and freer to express their feelings.”
Certainly in the U.S., ties have become almost verboten in many workplaces on business casual Fridays. And we all know how President Clinton made a national mockery of the necktie this year, allegedly using a bright yellow-and-blue designer Zegna as a means of obstructing Kenneth Starr’s justice.
Yet the endurance of the tie would seem to make its fate complicated at best. Even some who occasionally may chafe in a tie also retain a fierce fondness for it.
And whether getting rid of one’s tie produces a man who is more open, more sensitive, more communicative with his feelings–as the Dutch prince and New York sociologist suggest–is open to debate.
Nevertheless, this week, in stores clogged with shoppers browsing through tie racks, some men said they are just fine with their feelings, inside or outside the loop of a tie, and they would not be caught in the office minus the clothing ornament.
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“I guess I’m from the old school, but if it’s Monday through Friday, I’m uncomfortable without one,” said Gerard Pitchford, looking austere in a light brown cashmere overcoat with a subtle brown-and-blue designer tie tightly knotted underneath.
“I’ve been doing it this way for more than 20 years, and I just think this is the way it’s supposed to be done,” added Pitchford, who owns a Latin America travel business in the Loop.
Word of the prince’s bold move, followed by a newscaster’s tearing off his tie while reporting the story, was greeted a bit snippily by the official voice of America’s peddlers of neckwear.
“I don’t know how to respond to that except to say Dr. Joyce Brothers says the tie is the gift of manhood. If a 73-year-old man decides he’s not going to wear a tie anymore, maybe he’s ready for Viagra,” said Gerald Andersen, executive director of the Neckwear Association of America, noting that, “Ties have always been associated with male symbols.”
For her part, Brothers noted that, “Men have very few ways of preening like the male of other species, so they tend to use this to preen.
“If you watch a man walking into a party and he’s wearing a tie, he will invariably straighten the tie to give him a little courage. And a wife, if a woman–particularly an unattached pretty women not related to her husband–gives her husband a tie, she gets pretty bent out of shape because there is a symbolism involved.”
Rubinstein said she believes the putative demise of the tie is firmly rooted in the rise of the women’s movement. As men and women grow more equal in relationships and in the workplace, she said, the power tie is viewed as just that: a sign of male power.
That explains why younger men, who tend to be more tolerant of female colleagues rising in power than previous generations, shrug off the tradition, Rubinstein said.
Whether all of this is motivated by gender equity or emotional maturity or simply the whim of fashion, the tie industry does not seem to be hurting all that much. Domestic retail sales of ties have remained relatively steady, about $1.4 billion a year, Andersen said.
That is because many people not buying ties now “were the guys who only wore ties because they absolutely had to–and they bought the cheapest ties they could find,” Andersen said. “But the guys who like ties–the professionals who like expensive ties–are buying more of them.”
That is true in the case of Pitchford, who admitted to purchasing more than 15 this year at the Knot Shop at Clark and Monroe Streets. Still, he explained that to make a tie really work with his outfit, it takes a woman’s eye.
To be sure, once a man dons a tie, its style says something about him. A tie, Andersen said, allows a corporate guy to preserve one of the few options he has to avoid “disappearing into the khaki horde.”
When Bill Clinton was an Arkansas governor running for the nation’s highest office and trying to strike a presidential pose, he patterned his ties after the neckwear of past commanders-in-chief: a basic red, white or blue striped look.
But since taking office, the president has drifted to more daring colors, though that may be the result of falling under the spell of tie-bearing Monica Lewinsky, who had worked in a tie store and is said to be able to discern a tie’s designer at 50 paces.
Knot Shop manager Casey Charlton said sales have been brisk this shopping season, even if some shoppers seemed less than thrilled to fall back on the perennially mundane gift of a necktie.
“I was going to get him something a little more fun, but he asked for a tie,” said Natalie Bielinksi, 23, who admitted to being out of her element as she searched for something conservative, yet fashionable, that might satisfy her father, a corporate executive.
Andy Peterson, 28, who works for a human resources consulting firm that allows business casual every day, said he was unsure whether he is more emotive without a tie wrapped around his neck, but he definitely feels more comfortable. The open-collared Naperville resident said tie-wearers are viewed with suspicion in his office.
“If you wear a tie, you have to justify it because everyone will think you’re out interviewing for another job,” said Peterson, shopping for his brother, who must remain tie-clad in his high-level corporate job.
The type of tie that offended Dutch royalty is known as a four-in-hand. The industry story is that it is so named because the knot used to tie it is the same one that horsemen would use to tie the reins around their hands to control a four-horse carriage.
This holiday’s season hottest-selling neckwear is a Jerry Garcia model, local retailers report. The tie features the colorful artwork of the late Grateful Dead front man, who, ironically, would have looked wholly out of place in it.
“A well-tied tie is the first serious step in life,” Oscar Wilde once said. And according to a display that advertises Robert Daskal designer ties in stores around Chicago, the famous wag also stated: “One should either BE a work of art or should WEAR a work of art.”
“Uh-huh,” said Pitchford, spying the ad. “I just want it to match my suit.”