With four shopping days until Christmas, desperate persons, now on final approach to the holiday, are looking for last-minute gifts for men. For centuries, this choice has involved a necktie. Most people agree that ties make a sensible, available, portable, useful, appropriate, thoughtful, reasonable gifts. They are not always well-received. Item:
At a recent party in Hyde Park, a wife, asked why she seemed distraught, said, ”I spent a great deal of time today in a men`s shop picking a tie for my husband. When he opened the box, he said, `Well, um, nice, very nice, hmmm, thank you, yes.` I was crushed. Did I offend him? Tell me what I did wrong.” Friends turned to a Tempo investigative unit for help.
In times when men dress for success and young urban professional women increasingly turn to ties as part of their daily uniform, this is a problem that is not likely to go away. Indeed, the Neckwear Association of America reports that 1986 has been ”a strong tie year,” with sales of 96 million ties and upscale lines going for $13 to $15, many bought as Christmas gifts.
According to N-double-A executive director Gerald Anderson, this was the best showing for ties since 1969, the year neckties finally cracked the $5 barrier, long thought to be the upper limit people would pay for an item of men`s clothing that even supporters admit has no practical function.
Yet picking ties for others is a tricky matter, as New York fashion expert Alan Flusser noted last year. He dedicated his book ”Clothes and the Man, The Principles of Fine Dress” (Villard, $29.95) to ”The women in my life: Marilise, Janet, Rita, Skye, and Piper, all of whom I love dearly, none of whom I`d send to buy me a tie.”
Flusser hangs 200 of his own striped, cashmere, print, madras, wedding, club and satin ties on an old French four-bar towel rack inside his closet door. He says the proper width for a tie these days is 3 1/4 inches. He warns that a knot should never be so large that it spreads the collar nor so small it becomes lost. Standard ties are 52 to 58 inches long. Taller men, or those who use a Windsor knot, may need longer ties. Tips should reach the trouser waistband. Ends should be equal, or the smaller a fraction shorter.
Also, says Flusser, ”After you`ve confirmed the appropriateness of a tie`s shape, feel the fabric. If it`s made of silk and feels rough, the silk is inferior. Silk that is not supple is like hair that is dyed too often. It`s brittle. Ends fray easily. You may find misweaves and puckers.” These days Flusser notes a trend toward Hermes ties on Wall Street where last spring young men`s thoughts turned to yellow, in neckwear. Navy to burgundy are power ties. They always have been.
What else is new? Observes John Jones, merchandise buyer at Ultimo, 114 E. Oak St., where ties run from $30 to $60: ”Ties are wider. Don`t let anyone tell you differently. We see a lot of bow-ties, tied into the return of suspenders. The best-sellers? Probably `40s ties, with open patterns, floral designs and recognizable, not abstract, shapes. Colors? Salmon and peach, with high-blue shades.”
Strangely, unlike a hat (which keeps off rain), unlike a coat (which prevents freezing), unlike pants (which a man must wear to board a bus), a tie has no protective value. Yet ties pop up throughout history, in a variety of times and cultures, from ancient Chinese to Amazon River tribes whose leather straps hanging from the neck also are seen in primitive bars in Old Town.
Why?
The Tempo investigative unit asked staffers at the McLean Library of the Institute for Psychoanalysis, 180 N. Michigan Ave., to check their stacks of books and papers to see if there is any significance in the fact that men like long thin things hanging from their necks. Their answer: yes.
Author J.C. Flugel, whose ”The Psychology of Clothes” was published in London in 1930 by Leonard and Virginia Woolf, suggests that clothes are a means of preventing direct observation of a body, a series of fashion statements that began with Adam and Eve, who placed fig leaves over their private parts in the Garden of Eden, leading to the first dispute in fashion reporting. Some said the coverings showed modesty and were designed to inhibit fooling around. Others saw them as advertising, a way of drawing attention to the First Couple`s sexual organs.
Clothing historians note that such direct display continued into Tudor times when men wore tights, stuffing their masculinity into a cod piece, a portion of hose often dyed a vivid or contrasting color where padding was not unknown. Analysts also suggest that such blatant exhibitionism was later muted into unconscious symbols, giving birth to the tie.
Many think of the tie as a recent Western invention. But neck hangings, in some form or another, are found around the world. Anthropologists observe that primitive tribes often go unclothed, but rarely undecorated. In remote areas, native men wear necklaces from the teeth of fallen foes, an act of malicious dentistry some interpreters see as symbolic castration. Others link the practice to a modern trophy ritual, certain bars where waiters snip the ends of ties off patrons with sharp scissors and nail their shards to a wall. Chicago authors Michael Closen and Stephen Wagner, whose recent book,
”The Shopping Bag” (Crown) will be followed next year by a tome on ties, have tracked neck adornment back to the ancient Chinese, whose first emperor buried himself with an army of ceramic soldiers wearing scarf-like devices, a scene recently celebrated with a display at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Romans wore fascalia, a warm-up suit for vocal chords. Cicero put a strip of wool around his neck before major addresses. Roman soldiers on the column of Trajan, erected about 100 A.D., wore pieces of cloth knotted at the neck, hanging on their bare chests, perhaps, in battle, as a protection against armor chaffing. The tie seems to have died out during the Dark Ages, but it popped back in 1660, a big year in neckwear lore.
Members of a crack regiment from Croatia, on a toot in Paris after their victory over Turkey, were presented as heroes to Louis XIV. The king of style liked the colorful silk hankerchiefs Croatian officers wore around their necks, a concept that became known as the cravat, a derivative of the word Croatia.
The English, who enjoy a trend as long as it is uncomfortable, took up the diversion. Londoners wound mounds of cloth around their necks, decoration worn so high that a man wearing one had to turn his whole body to look sideways. Several were reported to have stopped sword thrusts.
Following such neckwear fashions as the Napoleon, derby, Oxford, Ascot, batswing and octagon, the tie, as it is known today, was developed in the late 1800s. It is now found principally in the back of clothes closets where, it is suspected, it breeds.
”It`s amazing to me that the tie has lasted with such vigor,” notes author Closen, a professor at John Marshall Law School. ”It has no purpose. It is strictly for adornment.”
Apparently, like cockroaches, the tie survives all attempts to kill it. In the sloppy, do-your-own-thing `60s, people still bought ties. In the mid-` 70s, ties survived both a recession and the heyday of leisure suits, though sales slumped to 75 million units. Occasionally used as murder weapons, ties can bring peace of mind. Many say that the feeling of ”being well dressed”
brings ”a peace such as religion cannot give.”
Whatever, these days ties are back–strong.
Authors Closen and Wagner bought several thousand ties from used-clothing stores and had them cleaned and hung them on hangers to prevent wrinkles. The collection includes ties with fishing scenes, bowling alleys, footballs in the air, birds, animals, flowers, tavern insignia, beer labels, martini glasses, church scenes, stained-glass and erotic nudes.
There are company ties, Christmas ties, Easter ties, St. Patrick`s Day ties, New Year`s Eve ties, Bicentennial ties, Fourth of July ties, kids` ties (clowns, bears and toys), political ties (elephants and donkeys), leather ties, bow-ties, ties that light up, helicopter ties that spin and ties that shoot water. All exhibit at least one purpose of personal decoration:
— Signs of rank and occupation.
— Signs of locality or nationality.
— Displays of wealth.
— The terrorizing of one`s enemies.
Those who take neckwear seriously see a tie as a billboard of clues, suggesting the wearer`s sex, occupation, nationality, social position and freedom from market forces. They can tell if he is a salesman or about to make a courtroom appearance. According to social researcher Paul Fussell, upper-class ties, never falling into the declasse category of legible clothing, rely on stripes, amoeba-like blobs and small dots, a mind-your-business stance in sharp contrast to proletarian neckwear, which links the wearer to a bowling team. The most conservative ties, small white dots against a dark background, are worn by trust officers at the better banks.
”As we move down the class hierarchy, actual words begin to appear on ties,” Fussell notes. ”These are meant to be commented on by viewers.” One sample: Grandfather`s tie, with grandchildren`s names hand-painted, diagonally in white. Others are conversation starters: ”I`d Rather Be Skiing.” Some are clever: ”Oh, Hell, It`s Monday.” Some, with large flowers in artistic colors, or blotches, carry an unspoken message: ”I`m a merry dog.”
Speaking even louder, says Fussell, is the bola tie, a woven or leather thong with a slide affected by retired persons living in Sun Belt enclaves in New Mexico. ”Like any other sort of tie,” says Fussell, ”this one makes a statement, saying, `Despite appearances, I`m really as good as you are, and my `necktie,` though perhaps unconventional, is really better than your traditional tie, because it suggests the primitive and therefore the unpretentious, pure and virtuous.”
Some link the wearing of ties to inherited tradition. Political and business leaders wear ties. Thus, so do young executives who wish to enter boardrooms of power. To others, ties are a start to manhood. ”A well-tied tie is the first serious step in life,” observed Oscar Wilde, who personally preferred a cravat with little flounce.
Ties, of course, have a fashion purpose, to offset the austerity of a business suit. They provide variety, since most wardrobes contain more ties than jackets. They cover shirt buttons, a problem that arose in 1893, a scorching hot summer when men forsook the cummerbunds around their waists, leaving a substantial display of white shirt front.
From a distance, astute students of neckwear can spot Freemasons, Ku Klux Klansmen or members of the Duk Duk Society of the former Bismarck Archipelago. They note colors. Red is associated with revolution, white with reaction. How a tie is worn may be significant. Primitive peoples removed garments as a sign of respect. Modern man loosens his tie, indicating entry into an informal social mode, though those wearing bow-ties, an all-or-nothing proposition, look drunk if they unhinge one side.
The tie is associated with responsibility, good employeeship and other presumed attributes of the obedient middle class. But ties also can have intimate meanings. In France in the 1800s, touching another man`s tie was a breach of honor, to be washed away with the blood of a duel. Today, few things make women angrier than watching another woman straighten her man`s tie. Some women hate ties. Elizabeth Taylor remarked to Richard Burton, while playing their roles in ”Who`s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” that ”real men don`t need props.”
Still, if ties persist, experts agree that they must look fresh and neat. Before removing a tie, they say, unknot it. Never wear a tie two days in a row. Allow ties to unwrinkle by themselves, while they will if hung from a hanger or, with knits, rolled in a drawer. ”And watch the soup,” adds one.
Incautious cleaning or sloppy pressing can destroy fine silk, though few tie-wearers go as far as some Ultimo customers, who bring their ties back to the store, have them unstitched, carry the pieces to a cleaner, then bring them back for resewing. ”Can you imagine anybody so anal?” asks Jones. He declines to name names.
The Tempo investigative unit also found: There are a total of 176 English regimental and old school ties. The nicest are those of the Guards Brigade, Royal Welsh Fusiliers and Oriel College. Italy exports 17 million ties each year. ”There are maniacs,” says Milanese tie maker Tino Cosma, ”who have 5,000 or 6,000 ties in their personal collections.”
Ties are used in stage costuming to quickly date the action. Artists often make their own. Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali hand-painted ties for friends. Some ties have multiple uses, such as a string tie to which one can tie a worm and fly-cast for fish. Each New Year`s Eve in Lake Geneva, Wis., a group of friends meets to present their annual Brown Tie Award to the person among them who showed the least promise during the previous year.
In the 1970s, women made skirts of neckties. One was seen last month in the Woodfield mall. A Chicagoan once wore a cashmere sweater to a restaurant on Long Island and was ordered by the maitre d` to put a tie over it. The tie worn for the shortest duration is the hangman`s noose, a loop with a running knot that binds closer the more it is drawn. One size fits all.
”A tie is personal,” says author Closen. ”It`s a matter of individual taste, like art and antiques. Its beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It`s tricky to buy one for someone else.”
Better, a gift certificate.
