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Is the tie becoming obsolete?

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21:30 / 03.08.05

From 2nd year at medical school (when y'have to go on wards and meet real ill people) onwards, I had to buy and wear a tie - even if, as a doctor, one frequently had to tuck it into one's shirt or fling it over one's shoulder. Some moaned about it, but I embraced the ruling. Over the years, I've thrilled to the various trends in tie-wearing (polka-dotted with/without waistcoat, big florals, little florals, faux-Hermes patterning, broad/narrow stripes, toned-with-shirt, contrasted-with-shirt) and must now have around forty or fifty really nice silk ties...

... which, weddings, funerals and Uniform Night at The Hoist aside, I haven't worn for the best part of two years.

Why? Firstoff, I moved to London in time to catch a really long, hot, Indian summer. Being a creature of cool Northern climes, I sweated like a pig and resolved to stock up on short-sleeved shirts - and started experimenting with not wearing a tie (doctors seem to have a looser dress code down here). More recently, when I was the victim of a sudden, unprovoked attack by a patient - who grabbed me by the shirt-collar but found nothing to choke me with - I was glad I'd gone open-necked. And then, of course, there's my style guru: Phil from Location, Location, Location.

I've read a couple of puff pieces, though, about how my own experiences reflect a more general trend among men. A softening of boundaries between formal and casual? Global warming? The rise of the metrosexual?

What d'you reckon?

23:20 / 03.08.05

I'm glad you brough this up Ganesh, it's something I've been noticing in my workplace for a while.

Before anything, one term: smart casual. I'll get back to that in a second.

My own tie-to-Triplets background is one of loathing for the noose. On a purely physical level, I'm a small guy and most ties, unless expensively tailored, look like I've raided my dad's fucking wardrobe. Same with long sleeve shirts. Nowwwwwww, I work in I.T. with no customer-facing element so apart from interviews I don't touch 'em.

The same seems to go for pretty much anyone else there, with a few exceptions: [1] some managers, [2] guys in their mid-forties and upwards [3] people trying too hard to look professional. A bloke who joined my team last year was in Group 3 and for the first three-odd months came in dappered up in full suit and tie, stood out like an eskimo's nipple.

After three months I think he clued in because now he's gone back to his - I presume default - dress of jumper/pants, shirt/pants during the week with anything else during the weekend.

Could the rise of the short-sleeve shirt be down to lack of permanency? In the past careers were for a lot longer in one place, you were part of that particular job track and company work force. If you didn't wear a uniform the starched shirt and tie was a close as. You were an impromptu-uniformed team that seperated you from the customer.

Nowadays, job churn is higher creating a very real sense that every job you take is pretty much based on the wind. This sense of churn, plussed with a non-customer facing role - becoming far more common with the rise of the call centre - may have diminished the status of clothing in the work place. You work clothes become just clothes. Clothes you'll probably wear on a night out a week later.

Which might be why. Ties are seen as old fashioned, stuffy and the province of middle-managers. UNSTYLISH. If you're 18-23 you wouldn't wear them on a night out unless you were trying to go against the grain. With work clothes doubling as clubbing/pubbing gear... and with the binge drink culture growing... perhaps casual clothes are just eating up the wardrobesphere. A fashion superbug.

00:12 / 04.08.05

Isn't this just another casualty (ha ha) of the gradual deformalising of office wear. Just 20 - 30 years ago, City professionals and senior civil servants commonly wore bowler hats.
Suits in general seem to be becoming more marginal. It wasn't that long ago that men wore a suit and tie to watch a football match. Now they seem to be reserved for weddings, funerals and job interviews (if that). In fact, at the last wedding I attended, there was a chap there in suit trousers and formal shirt (pink, double-cuffed) without a tie and (brace yourselves) untucked. We might have laughed, but perhaps he was just a few years ahead of his time.

paranoidwriter waves hello

00:50 / 04.08.05

Personally, I've always had an extreme aversion to wearing suits (I've never owned one). The reason for this is probably down to my schooldays and a healthy fear of uniforms. One incident in particular stands out: when a teacher decided to swing me around around by my tie and nearly choked me to death (took half an hour with a screwdriver to loosen the knot afterwards).

I was reminded of all this a few years ago whilst working for a well-known graffiti artist at hir very busy exhibition in Soho. I'd been working my arse off for two weeks when the aforementioned artist decided it would be a wheeze if all members of staff wore suits instead of casual attire (as the exhibition was supposed to be "street"). I said I didn't own one and refused to spend my wages buying a suit I'd never wear again. Suffice to say, I nearly lost my job. But coincidentally at the time I was reading 'The Life of Pi' and I took comfort from the writer's analogy that ties were "inverted nooses". It also made me wonder how many people had hung themselves by their own ties.

That typed, nicely tailored suits do look good (I can't deny it), and I've always thought Crockett and Tubbs looked great without ties. Hmm.. maybe this new Metro-suit thing has it's origins in the 80's revival that has been influencing fashion for the past (I dunno) seven years or so? Also, whenever I see a man wearing a jacket and trousers with (say) a T-shirt and no tie, I always think "Trendy Art Critic", as it's an outfit I've seen at more exhibitions I care to remember.

paranoidwriter waves hello

01:34 / 04.08.05

Just had another thought: at the time I had my no-suit-wearing-nearly-got-fired experience, I had a conversation about fashion (etc) with my old man, during which he pointed out the changes in fashion industry over the past forty years or so. In his day mass produced casual wear (e.g. sports wear) was virtually unheard of, and a young man was considered wealthy if he had more than two suits. My Dad said that individual expression or "coolness" was down to the cut, material, and which tailors you could afford. Nowadays, influenced by the many social changes that have happened in the west (e.g. more of us are less conservative nowadays with our appearance thanks to hippies, punks, new romantics, etc), maybe we're just more laid back and spoiled for choice?

Also, I wonder how / if Tie-Rack's sales have been affected? (Actually, does Tie-Rack still exist? Seriously, I don't get out much!)

04:35 / 04.08.05

i've been getting really into the power of the nice suit lately. i could definitely use more excuses to wear them and buy more.

however, i don't necessarily want to have to deal with that shit every morning before work.

09:57 / 04.08.05

I work in an industry that, at least in London, has generally (wig aside) followed the style statements of the red-cheeked, over-fed and over-paid barrister types often seen waddling around Lincolns Inn Fields and the Courts of Justice. So traditional pin stripe suits and very conservative shirts and ties. About 2 years ago during a horribly hot summer, my old managing director started coming into the office sans tie, open neck shirt and cufflinks removed. Within a week, I swear 80% of men in the office including myself, had adopted this look with an emotional sense of newly-granted liberation. Of course, at client meetings, attire was strictly old school.

However, although many of us enthusiastically viewed the subtle relaxation of the office uniform as a response to the innappropriateness of the suit and tie combo to the hot and sticky weather, many saw it as a pre-emptive strike towards achieving full equality with the women in the office who for years had enjoyed the benefits of wearing virtually anything they liked as long as it vaguely tied in with the old and threadbare black jacket retrieved from the back of the chair for client meetings.

Soon we were having more dress down days (for charidee of course). This meant no change for the women but for the men, another uniform was decreed, the ubiquitous ironed chinos and blue check shirt. Yuk....so much for equality!

I've now settled on always wearing a suit, but usually no tie. It means I don't have to think about what to wear to work and avoids the problem I always had of never being able to correctly match ties to shirts. Ties can go as far as I'm concerned. As a fellow slaphead, Phil Spencer rules!

Tryphena Absent

11:32 / 04.08.05

Brunner that's... you do realise that your mother's generation was the first to wear trousers regularly and that's only if your mother is in her 60s. Women have a looser dress code than men because they had such difficult climbing up to those kinds of jobs, it's being redressed now (by male attire becoming so casual) because there's such an increase in women working in the kinds of environments where a tie is expected.

And of course no one wears a bowler anymore because the 1980's both turned it into a more casual item and threw it out of the yuppie window into a tragic dumpster below.

11:51 / 04.08.05

Nina, please be assured that my comments on "equality" were firmly rooted in the here and now of my current (ok, last years) sartorial situation. I fully appreciate the struggle women have had regarding parity in the workplace.

*

15:19 / 04.08.05

And are still having, I'm sure you mean. Unless you'd take a average 20% pay cut to be able to wear that threadbare black jacket and whatever?

I like my neckties, generally, when I have an excuse to wear them. That comes of being a student and not working a proper office job where it's required.

What I do despise however is the current, hopefully short-lived fashion for horrid pastel patterned ties with horrid pastel patterned shirts. See here for horrifying example.

paranoidwriter waves hello

17:31 / 04.08.05

My eyes!

Red Cross Iodized Salt

18:25 / 04.08.05

I feel like I'm stating the obvious here, but isn't a tie - at least when worn in a business setting - just a big attention getting arrow to remind everyone that the person wearing it has a penis? Aside from contributing slight warmth in winter and providing an easy last minute Christmas gift option I fail to see what other utility it provides.

I have to wear a suit and tie to work every day (with the exception of a year spent at a dot com, this has been the case for every job I’ve had in the last nine years). I disliked it at first, but by now it’s just the uniform that I put on when I have to go to work in the morning. I end up spending more money on suits, shirts and ties than I would like to (because if I’m going to have to wear these clothes five or six days a week I want them to be well made and at least somewhat appealing), but I don’t think I put very much of myself into them. I’m not good at the smart casual thing at all though, so a suit and tie is actually an easier option for me. I don't own a single pair of otherwise 'smart' pants that are not part of a suit, and all my suits bar one I got primarily for wedding type events are very firmly in the realm of business suit. I can either do conservative businessperson (as I have to do every day in my conservative place of business) or me in my clothes (as I do at the weekend). If I ended up in a job with a smart casual dress code I’d be fucked if I could think what to wear. If the tie is in fact on its way out, I'm hoping so are chinos, 'proper' shoes and boring button down shirts.

18:57 / 04.08.05

Well yes, I certainly wouldn't argue that ties provide any sort of 'utilitarian' purpose - except maybe nominally keeping one's neck very slightly warmer in cold weather - and yes, their penis-indicating role is legendary. It's more of a historical thing, I guess, like cufflinks - and, like cufflinks, a tie permitted the wearer a certain amount of personal/social/cultural expression.

I actually find it less hassle in the mornings matching a suit and shirt rather than a suit, shirt and tie. I miss the affectation of tie-wearing, but I don't miss the sweltery discomfort...

20:10 / 04.08.05

I haven't had to wear a tie since boarding school, but then, the job's I've been in are a bit more blue-collar that those of other posters. That said, I have been paying attention to what's going on in the suit-and-tie realm and there seems to be a general lamentation about the fact that office casual has slowly taken the place of office formal.

I personally enjoy wearing formal clothes, and I enjoy tying different knots. This is most likely because I don't have to wear them on a daily basis, it's a form of culture tourism for me.

"Suit" has become a derogatory word. The only people who wear ties on a regular basis are doctors, lawyers, politicians and salesmen, and none of these professions are without their detractors.

20:46 / 04.08.05

Yeah, doctors are cunts.

Is the infantalisation of adulthood a broader theme covering the deformalising of day wear? I was thinking about this last night in connection with an anxiety I've been having as I approach 30 that I still dress much like I did as a teenager. And it's not just me - lots of people my age seem to be stuck in sartorial stasis. Perhaps it's another manifestation of a broader kind of arrested development (relatively speaking) in 'our' generation. We marry later, have kids later, shrug off pensions, save less, spend more on toys... The average age of a Playstation user is 28.
Could it be that ties are being forced out of fashion in the workplace by a new generation of culturally influential middle managers who are still shunning adult things?

Red Cross Iodized Salt

20:48 / 04.08.05

The only people who wear ties on a regular basis are doctors, lawyers, politicians and salesmen, and none of these professions are without their detractors.

You forgot bankers. Also Mormons.

Speaking of…a guy I know had a short fling with a temporarily lapsed Mormon missionary some years ago. Apparently those black ties are the perfect restraint (in terms of length, strength and comfort level) for light bondage.

Does that qualify as utilitarian?

21:50 / 04.08.05

Yeah, doctors are cunts.

To go off on a tangent, it's reputedly the Obs/Gyn specialists who routinely wear bow ties - or dispense with ties altogether. For not-too-hard-to-envisage reasons.

23:21 / 04.08.05

...and none of these professions are without their detractors.
Poor phrasing, forgive me.
What I was trying to convey was a general distrust of the suit-wearing classes by the majority.
Caveat: I live in the U.S., the country that elected an New Hampshire-Born, Yale-graduated oil family scion to the Presidency on the notion that he's "reg'lar folks" because he has a ranch in texas.
[personal anecdote]
I'd say that Smoothly has probably hit upon a major factor, the quest for perpetual adolescence. My friends have recently gave me a hard time about my choice in clothing, saying that I look "corporate." I was wearing black CK jeans, a short-sleeve shirt, unbuttoned and untucked, with an undershirt. These are people who see a t-shirt and sandals as good clothes to wear to a job interview. No, they aren't cafe staff. One is an editor for a national software magazine, another is a paralegal.
[/personal anecdote]

Ex

07:43 / 05.08.05

I think that yes, chaps are getting more casual, and more perpetually youthful - I have photos of my grandfather in his youth, having a picnic in a field wearing a suit and a collared shirt - can't remember if he's wearing a tie or not, must check.

My perception of tie-wearing chaps has changed over the last year.
I wear a suit and tie often - working in a University and living in Brighton, it seemed like an fantastic archaic affectation, as Ganesh puts it. Like lekvar, there was no compulsion to (nobody in my current office wears a suit, let alone a tie) so it was fun.
And being a lady, for me, it wasn't just cross-dressing, it was cross-era-dressing with some class nonsense thrown in. If you look in The Drag King Book, if I recall correctly, the US drag kings sem to be aiming at working-class masculinity (baseball caps and sleeveless vests) while the few UK ones are going for the louche aristocrat look - suits, ties and top hats. Very nice.

Sadly, since I moved to London and got some really good ties, the meaning of the tie has altered for me. I spend too much time in pubs where the tie is worn by shouty shouty idiots. I've not been around people who have to wear ties professionally, daily, and to be frank, it's taking half the fun out of it for me.
I propose a movement for the removal of the tie after work, so if someone still has one on in the pub, you can tell they're particularly fond and proud of their tie.
I still like them. They're precise. I like the way they're supposed to be a very limited space for male working self-expression, but if you're a woman the focus of what you're supposed to be self-expressing totally shifts.

I have a plain black tie today. It was going to be black velvet but I couldn't find it in my clothes heaps. Is anyone else posting to this thread while wearing a tie? Is that a creepy question?

08:23 / 05.08.05

I also appreciate the distinction between suit-by-choice and suit-for-work. I think suits and ties can look sharp when worn at a social occasion, but wearing it to work makes you just another schmoe in a suit. e.g. when I wear a suit, I'm a conservative office drone. When Nick Cave wears a suit, he's, well, Nick Cave.

I only wear a tie if I'm wearing a suit, which is never, in my current job. It's pretty much smart casual here so I wear the business shirt and trousers combo, i.e. a suit without jacket or tie. I don't own clothes that fit into smart casual that aren't actual business wear. Outside work it's solely t-shirts for me.

I think the problem is that we're still in-between eras. Only when the suit and tie are completely eradicated from the workplace will they be able to explore their full potential as a personal fashion choice.

Sorry Ganesh if this thread seems to be more about suits with ties than specifically about ties. It demonstrates how difficult it can be to divorce the two.

09:29 / 05.08.05

Nick Cave and I share the same tailor.

I agree with you Loomis. I think suits can look great, but they just feel inappropriate in an office these days somehow. I’ve not worn one to work for years. But if I am wearing one, I like to wear a tie too. I know Phil disagrees, but I think that an open-necked shirt makes the jacket look out of place. With a jacket and trousers, I think you can get away with it, but a suit needs a tie I reckon. And if you’re going to wear a tie, I really wish people would tug them tight. I shudder at the sight of young men with knots that bridge the tips of their collars (as championed by first division footballers c. 2000). Less of a knot, more of an elaborate fold.

09:50 / 05.08.05

Smoothly, although I don't often wear a tie to work now, I totally agree with you regarding the quality of one's chosen knot. What's the point of wearing one if you just half heartedly arrange it around your neck? It looks loose and messy and suggests you don't know how to do it properly! When I decide to put on a tie I favour a neat half-Windsor knot, not too big and not too small. I just wish it had a different name....

10:01 / 05.08.05

Half-Saxe-Coburg doesn't have the same ring does it?

One thing I will stipulate however. I make it a point never to trust a man wearing a short-sleeved shirt with a tie. Strictly for mormons.

Mind you I have never been able to get my head around the concept of short-sleeved business shirts at all. Gives me horrible memories of old codgers in Australia going to the RSL (like worker's club, for you Brits) in short-sleeve shirt, businessy shorts and long socks. Brrr!

10:09 / 05.08.05

And while we're on the subject, does anyone have an opinion on cravats?

12:53 / 05.08.05

I personally loath the tie and all that it stands for: Nasty, uncomfortable, pointless, enforced bondage.
All of my jobs I have started by wearing both a suit and tie but have soon realised that it is no longer required unless meeting clients or similar. Therefore for work I wear trousers and a shirt, no tie.
Suits I am ambivilent about - for me they are forever associated with work and therefore never wear one unless forced.
Because of all this I resent spending money on my work clothes and therefore can never bring myself to spend enough money to make myself look smart/stylish. Put me in a suit I don't look smarter, the suit just looks scruffier.

13:36 / 05.08.05

...short-sleeve shirt, businessy shorts and long socks...

Ah yes, businessy shorts, known in New Zealand as "the walk short" (singular). The appropriate tie HAD to be exactly the same colour. Oh and a beard was compulsory.

Thankfully, business dress in NZ has now caught up to at least 1968....

15:49 / 05.08.05

And while we're on the subject, does anyone have an opinion on cravats?

I like 'em, rouche-knot, circa 1890. Goes with my facial hair thing.

Ties, see, are really less than 100 years old. I mean, there were ties in the 1800s, but they weren't like today's ties. So it's less a permanent thing than you might think. (More on tie history here, and in this Barbelith discussion on suit history here.)

I kind of (as made obvious above) treat ties as costume objects. They're like props. Nobody where I work wears them unless they're either investors or making a presentation before investors.

This may well be a reflection of that widening gulf between the upper and lower class -- the professionals/financiers being in the tie-wearing class, and the rest of us being open-necked proles. Or it might be another kind of evolution altogether.

22:09 / 05.08.05

Phyrephox, don't you think the tie can stand for stuff other than wageslave grimness?

Hmm. Maybe one enjoys tie-wearing more when it's at least slightly optional...

05:57 / 06.08.05

I love wearing ties, but never wear a suit so can't really find a reason to wear them. I wore one at Uni, and not in a, look at me I'm different way, but in that I just really like them and found myself feeling better for dressing that little bit smarter. I do a job in which suit's aren't practical and I tend to get dirty most days, but my housemate is in a suit job and I love the way he looks going to work most days (however he is a skinny fucker and looks good in just about anything). I actually find the sight of suited gents who have removed their ties at the end of the day a really horrible thing, really looks bad to me, only George Clooney in Out of Sight can pull that look off.

10:08 / 06.08.05

I just don't like ties. Mainly because wearing a tie is less comfortable than not wearing one. I never claimed that not wearing a tie was some kind of revolutionary act, just that I don't like wearing them.

Tryphena Absent

23:48 / 06.08.05

I actually find the sight of suited gents who have removed their ties at the end of the day a really horrible thing, really looks bad to me, only George Clooney in Out of Sight can pull that look off.

But surely that's because the look is coupled with a certain scruffy weariness. Clooney of course is not particularly scruffy or weary and wardrobe assistants have arranged the look so as not to portray that. If you haven't worn a tie all day than your lack of tie will be arranged around that and of course there's always the option of a shirt without a collar.

nedrichards is confused

22:29 / 07.08.05

I work at a company where the wearing of ties is actively discouraged at all levels and functions of the organisation which is surprisingly fun as, in common with some posters above, I can never match tie to shirt to suit properly. It's a colour thing. A probably contributory factor may be that I never really learnt how to tie one properly at school where I perversely really liked wearing it properly and smart. Unlike all the other lads who followed on with the dubious fashion of tieing it short and leaving the skinny side outside the shirt or other indignities. Possibly some sort of group differentiation thing going on there.

However rather than the true business casual we (at least in my team) tend to go to town a bit on the shirts, with patterns and bright colours being a bit de rigeur. If there's an external meeting I tend to smarten up into a slightly more formal shirt, Hilditch and Key, Tyrwhitt etc. with nice cufflinks as some sort of concession to concept of the suit. Not sure why but I really, really like cufflinks which after all I'm sure followed the same function as a tie in a pre-button society.

Keith, like a scientist

20:25 / 15.08.05

i decided a couple years ago that ties were just not for me...i don't like how they look and i don't like wearing them myself. so i made it a rule in my life that i don't wear ties to anything. i've discovered that the right suit and shirt combo is way more stylish than any tie could ever be at weddings and such.

part of the reason that they are on the way out is that they serve no useful purpose and that has generally been the way of accessories that turn obsolete after a time. I mean, what's the point of a tie?

22:03 / 15.08.05

Ladies who wear ties: do you buy men's dress shirts in your size, do you wear your ties with a collared blouse, or some other option? I find that the collars on my shirts don't accomodate the width of a tie.

22:51 / 15.08.05

Tried buying a man's shirt? That might answer your question.

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