Necktie Nonchalance

The Sociology of a Strip of Cloth

Caveat

The reader will find no information here about the selection or knotting of ties.

All episodes began similarly: 'This is Jim Rockford. At the tone leave your name and message; I'll get back to you'. I always got back to him, for his humour was how I like it: wry and ironic. This placed the Rockford Files a whole block ahead of Starsky and Hutch. Every week Jim Rockford, private eye - two hundred dollars a day plus expenses - fought hoodlums with sarcasm; for he never carried a gun.

And he never wore a tie either.

It niggled somewhat: that Jim Rockford never wore ties. You see, he wore jackets. And jackets require ties. Not all jackets that is true; but sports jackets do, two hundred dollars a day or not. Yes, I know he wouldn't solve crime any sooner by taking a strip of cloth, wrapping it around his neck, and tying it into a double Windsor. That's not my point. He was just ill-dressed.

In the same decade John Travolta wore a white, three-piece suit - similarly unaccoutred. If sports jackets require ties, then suits sure require them. I made excuses for Rockford; he was just careless. Travolta was different: his laxity was intentionally provocative. Sartorially rotten in the state of disco, he poked his forefinger aloft for Terpsichore, while giving the middle-finger to dress sense. A spread-eagled shirt collar as well! He was saying, 'Hey, dude, look at me - I'm not wearing a tie!' Yes, I know he wouldn't dance any better with a strip of cloth around his neck; that's not my point. He was just ill-dressed.

Since then the decline's been inexorable: neckties are falling into desuetude, where they'll shortly join top hats. Ties, it is frequently argued, are irrelevant and unduly restrictive - men are discarding them, just as women discarded their corsets. Times change: tieless men are no more unprofessional, than uncorsetted women are immoral. Gentlemen, set yourself fee! Physicians, professors, civil servants, CEOs, lawyers, are all joining the tie-eschewers. Even our Right-On Royals are doing it. Right on!

When I watch Jim Rockford now, on DVD that is, he no longer seems ill-dressed. This reversal reflects cultural conditioning: custom hath made it a property of easiness, as Shakespeare put it. If you only see sports jackets with ties, or suits with ties, as was the case in the 1970s, when Jim Rockford got his two hundred dollars a day, and John Travolta poked his forefinger in the air, then tie eschewal looks kind of odd. It's no longer odd, because we've grown so used to seeing it.

But whenever I watch those old movies I still find myself thinking that ties bestow something worth keeping; a je ne sais quoi. Lord knows I've tried hard to see it otherwise, but I've failed. When considered in the ruthless, cold, logical abstract, to wrap a strip of cloth around one's neck, and then to tie it into a knot, is a bit daft - let's admit that. I have told myself this, ad nauseam - but it's made no difference. To my eye, a jacket or suit still looks better with the neckly concomitant. We have a conundrum, then: why is this impression of smartness so persistent?

Well, I have two conjectures.

First, there's nothing intrinsically smart about the tie. A vestige of mental stubbornness (brain-washing, if you like) has survived thirty years of cultural conditioning. After all, I grew up during a time in which ties were not only ubiquitous; they were also deemed smart. But, just as there's nothing intrinsically wrong about trousered women, there's nothing intrinsically wrong about tieless men. All that matters culturally speaking, is where and when.

Second, there is something intrinsically smart about the tie, wholly irrespective of where or when. It is claimed for example that shirt buttons, being an inelegant feature, are better covered up. There is something to this. My boss wore shirts of insufficient girth in which the buttons pulled vainly, and, while sitting at meetings, I'd repeatedly glimpse small patches of chest. Now if my boss were a woman then I'd scrutinise her problem most carefully; but unfortunately he was a man. My boss might've worn ties; but better still, restocked his shirts. More generally, though, the button-covering argument is plausible inasmuch bowties seem inelegant, at least to my eye, unless worn with dress-shirts. This button-covering argument, however, is easily cut to shreds, because waistcoats simply reintroduce a whole new row of buttons. Of course, a man might wear his tie outside the waistcoat . . .

This, I believe, only demolishes the utilitarian strand of the 'smart' argument; for ties are indubitably aesthetic. The human eye can never fully set aesthetics aside, no matter how ruthless the mind's utilitarian ideology. The tie is the only male garment that is entirely nonfunctional; that is solely decorative. Should we therefore discard it, as an irrelevance? I am not so sure. During the 1970s our town hall received an extension in the 'modern' style. No-one wept thirty years later when this carbuncular excrescence was rightfully demolished; yet to demolish the original Gothic architecture of high Victorianism would be a desecration indeed. The eye enjoys the ornateness. Buildings are like clothes: they are more than human containers.

Ties also confer unsmartness, albeit when worn improperly. I refer to those ne'er-do-wells, the tie-slackeners. Of course, I excuse a man when he's been in an accident or attacked - I refer to the tie's wilful misuse. Why wear a garment that confers smartness, in manner that is sloppy? This slackening practise reverses the smartening effect. I cannot say why this is so, exactly; but the loose knot, and the floppy open-neck, is undoubtedly less appealing. Why, it even makes the tie look a bit silly - by emphasising its nonutility, rather than rejoicing in it.

Perhaps this want of appeal rests, also, on subtle cultural associations.

Let me explain. The evening tie-slackener is to some degree excusable. He has, after all, dressed himself properly that morning; but now he's tired and, working late at the office, wants to advertise this fact. Now if he told us verbally, we might conclude that he's laying it on a bit thick. And so instead he conveys this information nonverbally, by slackening off his tie and unbuttoning his top button. This excuse is only partial because, when we work late at the office, and wish to relax our dress somewhat, the solution, surely, is not to make ourselves look sloppy, but to remove the tie wholesale. The same argument applies to body temperature. I will not deny that ties render a man more susceptible to overheating. The tie is innocent though: it is the top button that's culpable. From my own experience, I'd say that significant body heat dissipates upwards through the open-necked shirt. The solution to overheating, though, is not to wear the tie sloppily, but to remove it completely.

The habitual tie-slackener is a different matter entirely - he should be justly impeached. Each morning he says to himself, 'this 'ere strip of cloth - it's really, really tedious; I can't be bothered! I know what I'll do - I won't knot it properly. I'll just make this here slovenly effort; leave my top button undone, and sort of drape the thing around my neck.' But are we right to suppose, from this sloppy attitude to self-presentation, a similarly sloppy attitude to life?

This reminds me of my schooling, in which to slope one's handwriting forwards was the hallmark of good taste and refinement; but to slope it backwards was a sign of ill-breeding and moral degeneracy. When rules seem rather arbitrary, then I get suspicious. Don’t try and tell me that when I drink tea, I must stick out my little finger. Such rules are only there, to identify members of your in-group. On the other hand, there was also a school rule that we keep our hands out of our pockets; for to do otherwise was to slouch. But before you reject this rule as arbitrary nonsense, you should first walk on a slippery surface.

Social snobberies are nowadays mostly extinct (or perhaps they have transmogrified); but it is not, I am sure, wholly coincidental that two habitual tie-slackeners I knew personally - they never wore their strips of cloth properly in many years - were both notorious scrimshankers. And yet I also know a man of apparently good character who, when I tactfully alluded to his delinquency, assured me that his collar sizes were now too small. But the slackened tie, whatever the reason, makes a poor sight in job interviews - irrespective of qualifications and experience. As for whether a man's application should be binned on this basis: well, I shall come back to this point shortly.

Amongst dramatists and thespians, the slackened tie is semiotic: it implies the man's character. What kind of man puts a tie on each morning, but can't be arsed to knot it properly? These tie-slackeners are a certain breed of journalist or policeman: sleazy, venal, corrupt, insubordinate. In Life on Mars, the new superintendent arrives to take charge. He finds a sloppy, ill-disciplined team. The men stare back at their senior officer with dumb insolence, cigarettes poised between thumbs and forefingers. Naturally, all ties are slackened to the last man - I would expect nothing less. Inspector Regan of the Sweeny was quite different: he arrived at work properly dressed. He only slackened his tie after sifting through hundreds of mug shots late into the night, or during long interrogations when villains refused to say where they left the lolly. Dramatists also, it should be said, reinforce as well as exploit this association: it is a two-way process.

A consanguineous delinquent knots his tie once, and only once - the first time he wears it. Then, while undressing, he hangs it in its knotted state, in readiness for the next outing. He wishes to save himself several valuable seconds each morning. No doubt he goes to work with stubbled chin for the same reason. Unshaven men were once the sleazy or lazy type; they are now 'hip'. Of course, these 'knot once' men are not necessarily tie-slackeners as well; but both habits a betray somewhat perfunctory attitude to life.

I would like to highlight another type of transgression: I refer to the tie that, while circumnavigating the neck, peers out from beneath the turn-down collar. To my eye, the smartness-conferring property is thereby vitiated. I cannot say why this should be, exactly; perhaps we subconsciously buy into the deceit, that the tie consists solely of its visible element - the knot and the descending section - and to reveal the subterfuge is to spoil the effect. (With old-fashioned evening dress, for example, a man might not remove his jacket; for the shirt was a bib only.) Shirt and tie manufacturers are unlikely to coordinate their efforts, and so standardise the dimensions, in the manner of other industrial products; and so men must continually guard themselves against this infelicity. Moreover, if the tie's rearmost section is satisfactorily hidden on dressing, it may nonetheless suffer from subsequent slippage. In consequence, I developed the fidgety habit of checking and re-checking my rear view throughout the day. I was doing this the other day, while waiting for the lift, when the doors opened, and my audience wondered what on earth I was up to, presenting them with my elbows either side of my head.

I suggested just now that, on perceiving the tie, we subconsciously buy into a subterfuge: that it consists solely of its visible element, the knot, and the section that descends therefrom. This consideration is relevant to the 'collar point', which it pleases designers to move further and further back. They have, by imperceptible increments, just a little more each year, and hoping that I will not notice, forced the collar point so far back that those sections of tie, either side of the knot, are exposed to view. This degeneracy, I gather, is termed a 'cut away'. By exposing the artifice, the designers are violating the principles of sprezzatura. There are 'modern' architects who deem it right, for example, that heating and plumbing conduits be laid down outside the building, and made a feature of, rather than hidden within the interior; of which the Pompidou Centre is a notorious example. With ties, if we go on like this, exposing more and more of the tie's construction, we shall find ourselves back at the winged collar. On the other hand, in the 1940s the collar point descended so low, and the collar-spread became so narrow, that knots would suffocate. I wish the designers would stop fiddling.

The tie is an unfortunate accoutrement insofar as it will draw attention to a man's 'centre forward'. In my early twenties ties hung vertically down my own abdomen like a plumber's line. Now that I've reached middle age, and I've relaxed my belt by two notches, ties follow my chest to my stomach, then throw themselves off a precipice; for there are now two inches between the tie's end and my belt. But as my paunch is not too large, a waistcoat will disguise it.

Whenever I see business leaders, CEOs, politicians etc., and they are not tieless, they are still devoid of sartorial panache; for today's ties are unimaginative and unappealing; they are worn as obligation or chore; they fail to harmonise with the rest of the outfit; they lack lustre; they are not taken seriously. A man's tie once offered enormous latitude; it was an opportunity to have some fun, to be a little playful; to complement the sobriety in the rest of the male wardrobe. Those acid-trip dreams have long gone: ties are either uniformly coloured, or striped at forty-five degrees. Where are those fractals and Mandelbrot sets? Nowadays 'anything goes', God knows, except for contemporary ties, the designs of which are as boring as they are unvarying. In these circumstances the tie subtracts more than it adds. Worse still, this laxity feeds a vicious cycle of sartorial decline.

I'd like to consider the consequences of tie eschewal, one of which is the top button's purported function. Biologists believe, for example, that our appendix is the sole remaining feature of some ancient organ; and that evolution will eventually eradicate it. That is to say, the appendix is an example of 'vestigialism'. Similar vestigialism, it seems to me, applies to the top button. Shirt manufacturers continue to provide them, just for those increasingly rare occasions when they are needed. Even when shirts are not designed for ties, they are nonetheless thus furnished. Why? Perhaps sartorial evolution will one day eradicate the top button.

In black-and-white celluloid, I sometimes see tieless men with their top buttons buttoned up. They are in police custody, and, for obvious reasons, their strips of cloth have been confiscated. (For the same reason, these men must hold up their own trousers.) In the present day, however, now that tielessness is the new norm, no tieless man ever fastens his top button. And dramatists, if they wish to imply a man is little odd, perhaps slow-witted or not right in the head, insist that he button up his top button. In a television sitcom, this was described as a 'paedophile look'. It drew a good audience response.

I knew a tie eschewer who insisted that his top button perform its anointed task: he never deviated from this unusual practise, not once. Well, I did not inform the local constabulary. Rather, I dismissed his idiosyncrasy as slightly curious but wholly innocuous. His fastened button was a little like one of those eyes that looks at you slightly askew: you notice it at first, but eventually you forget it's there. When we were in the pub, I jokingly said, 'Now I'm going to do something daring', and I unfastened his button. I guess if he had anything to hide, such as a lynching scar, he'd have stopped me as soon as he realised what I was up to. But instead, he waited calmly for me to finish unfastening the button, and then promptly re-fastened it. He never ventured any explanation for his idiosyncrasy, nor was I so indelicate as to question him. Possibly he hated to see a button standing idle.

But if our top button has the day off, then, on many a shirt, especially those purposively designed for the tie, the open neck lacks sufficient rigidity to support itself on its own; and so it assumes a floppy or withered profile rather like a deflated balloon that is, it must be said, unappealing; and frankly a bit of a mess. The fastened button, as it were, lends structure and rigidity. I gather it is possible to purchase certain stiffeners which, sown into the shirt, will confer the necessary rigidity. Provided the open neck possesses this rigidity, such a look is not necessarily bad, even with a sports jacket; it even approaches respectability. It should not be overdone, however, unless one's aim is to resemble Harry Hill.

Outside the workplace, ties are seldom nowadays seen. No-one watches a football match, goes to the supermarket or walks the dog thus accoutred. Unlike in previous generations, the quotidian activities of contemporary life are invariably undertaken in a state of tielessness.

Inside the workplace, society continues to associate ties with office wear. This is curious, insofar as ties characterise another and far more prominent field of work: namely, the hospitality industry. That is to say, ties have retreated to high-end pubs, restaurants, cinemas, theatres, night clubs, casinos, etc.; where they continue to enjoy rude health. This is a fate they share, incidentally, with waistcoats. I have long eschewed the waistcoat, while holding a sneaking regard for it. When I began wearing them at the office, the ribaldry was all too predictable: 'You look like a croupier'. Smart attire is not the gentlemanly hallmark it once was: nowadays, it suggests that I'm a bartender.

When businesses dress their customer-facing staff thus, it is to project a certain image: that is, of professionalism. The torn-jean club and the collarless tee-shirt brigade will deny this link, between attire and professionalism. I am not so sure it can be dismissed; but, be that as it may, I would argue it differently: attire sets the tone; it affects ambience. This tone-setting function, I would also argue, applies just as much to customers. I know of pubs from which high-viz jackets or football strips are excluded; and in my own workplace, shop-floor staff, before using the canteen, must change out of their overalls.

Today's waiter must dress smartly, to serve customers who like to reveal their legs through ripped trousers. When I dine out or attend the theatre, I see this disjunction quite frequently. Things have come to such a pass, that businesses cannot turn away custom. Only those establishments with considerable brand strength, and consequently sufficient clout, are able to enforce their dress codes. It is reassuring to discover that not even Rod Stewart will enjoy afternoon tea at the Ritz, if he arrives in a state of tielessness. The restaurant at the Dorchester similarly proscribes tielessness. Jeans are permitted, but only if unadorned with those exquisite rips and holes. When I discovered that baseball caps are also Verboten at the Dorchester, I made a dinner reservation forthwith. What is more, at the Dorchester the waiters wear ties with collar bars.

When I was a young man, night clubs were notorious for their dress codes; it was 'not tonight, mate', to the tie eschewer. Things have changed (i.e., degenerated). Arriving in town early on Sunday morning for a train, I saw crowds of Saturday-night revellers staggering home. The girls were nicely turned out; but the lads wore trainers, skinny or torn jeans and collarless tee-shirts. When I mentioned this to my tailor, he told me an interesting story. He has a customer who attends night clubs in booted-and-suited apparel; in consequence of which he gets into rows with other men. 'Who do you think you are, my good man, going about thus accoutred?' Well, I suppose the pissed-up scruffs are little less nuanced than that; but that is the sentiment conveyed: a man does something wrong, by gussying himself up. It is alright for women to take care of their appearance. But men don't do that . . . unless of course they're homosexual. This attitude is lampooned in Idiocracy (2006), a film which is taken to presage the Trump presidency, but it is insightful about sartorial trends. Because the protagonist is a well-dressed man, people keep asking him: 'Are you a homo?' 'Are you a homo?'

When my tailor told me this story, I was reminded of Quentin Crisp's remark: rather than keep up with the Joneses, it is far easier to drag the Joneses down to one's own level. I also began thinking about the mating ritual, as it plays out in these late-night establishments. There is a poorly known saying: 'a suit is to women, what lingerie is to men.' I have two suppositions about the obloquy a smartly dressed man faces in today's night club. First, the pissed-up scruffs see a man who, by his suit, advertises himself as wealthier or of higher social status - this gives him, in that appalling vernacular, 'pulling power', something the ripped-jean brigade resents. Second, the women jab their elbows into their pissed-up scruffy boyfriends, and say to them: 'When we go out together, why can't you dress like that man over there'; an admonishment which the scruffs also resent. Either way, the suited man had better look out, or he'll get a good kicking.

I believe it intuitively reasonable that, throughout history and cross-culturally, whenever men earn their crust by intellectual labour, they will advertise this fact: that is, by dressing in a manner unsuited to manual labour. There are few garments more impractical than a toga, for example. By his impractical attire, the Roman patrician announced his rank in the civil hierarchy: 'I am no cobbler, plumber or potter'. (Ego non sutorum regule aut fictor plumbarius, according to those Classicists at Google). The same argument applies, I think, to the necktie. Although I write in nostalgic sadness at the tie's demise, I will not deny that in many occupations this garment is impractical and unduly restrictive.

What were those Second Lieutenants up to, dressed like that? The necktie was fine behind the lines, at a staff conference, say - but amidst the mud of Flanders field? Wear a tie while facing murderous enfilades, or whizz-bangs, or five-nines? Really? Those men might well go to their deaths, but must do so dressed as gentlemen. Officers are gentlemen, after all; and gentlemen perform no manual work - they direct it. It was the enlisted men who, tie-less, laid the barbed wire and dug the trenches. In today's army though, an officer's battledress is tie-less: the army has seen sense - practicality trumps decorum. Indeed, television documentaries reveal that battledress has become daily dress; for it is even worn around barracks. In today's army, ties fight a rear-guard action in dress uniforms, and perform their defensive manoeuvres on the parade ground.

Similar comments apply to P.C. Plod, for whom ties were surely an unwise adornment. Introduced in the 1960s, they replaced the Victorian tunic as a 'modernising' measure. Nevertheless, should any kerfuffle arise, it furnished villains with an ideal copper-strangling device. Actually, these ties were sometimes a subterfuge: they clipped onto the top button, with just sufficient limb, on either side, to tuck under the collar, and thus masquerade as the real McCoy. But even this subterfuge was discarded, eventually; and the decline set in. For the tie was not just an index of standards: it was also a gatekeeper that held those standards in place. When it was jettisoned, a competition began for the 'scruffiest copper' award.

My argument vis-à-vis impractical dress needs some refinement. In old photographs and newsreels, ties are evident in artisanal or working-class occupations: craftsmen turning lathes; labourers wheeling barrows; painters decorating houses; green grocers weighing apples; bricklayers trowelling cement. Perhaps these men aped their 'betters'? The tie was an encumbrance, but what mattered more, was looking respectable. And a man did not look respectable in a state of tielessness.

When I began my career in the '80s, strips of neck-cloth were still observable in engineering workshops. They were worn, however, solely by men nearing retirement. I would cringe, watching them operate lathes and milling machines. A man might be yanked to a violent death, his tie entangled in a whirling machine; but at least he'd make a smart corpse. Today's elfansafetly culture forbids ties. And nowadays, collarless tee-shirts rule.

The workplace in which the shop-floor is now tieless, but the office remains nicely accoutred, is under attack from another angle. As a manager sighed to me, 'ties set up a barrier between staff and shop floor'. It is matey, you see, to discard your strip of cloth. Our own CEO is matey, when he does the same. Our Right-On Royals are matey: they are saying, 'we are not stuffed shirts'. Cabinet ministers are matey: 'just see me as any bloke you might meet down the pub.' While this levelling ethos has its place, I am not overly fond of it. I do not want matey Royals: I want barriers and deference. I want to address Prince Charles as 'Sir', not 'Hey, Chaz'. I do not want my GP to address me by my first name. Sometimes we are better off with distance. When miners began addressing their pit boss as 'Dave' or 'Pete', discipline and authority suffered.

The tie clings to life in occupational redoubts through conservatism mostly, abetted by the dress code. The edict - 'ties must be worn' - is however increasingly problematical, because today's managers have hung themselves on the diversity gallows: they cannot say 'we value everyone's differences', while insisting that we dress consistently. You can't have your cake and eat it, mate; and you can't wear your strip of cloth and leave it at home. This is a muddle, one consequence of which is the unstated dress code. The problem here, is that unstated dress codes are more difficult to follow.

In the mid-'80s my own employer no longer issued any dikat as such; but, amongst office staff, ties were still 'sort of' expected'. Open-neckedness would've probably escaped censure; but if you just please yourself, then there are . . . ramifications. There was a certain draughtsman who, unusually for the time, wore an earring. Now it was okay for the shop floor to do this, they didn’t know any better, but amongst staff . . . And the very day promotion hove into view, there was just this empty hole in the man's earlobe. That's the kinda thing you gotta think about if you break the rules, even the unwritten ones.

In my own workplace, ties are nowadays mostly extinct - a generation has emerged for whom tie-wearing is an alien practise. The older men never went tieless; they just retired. As it happens I have aged, or rather surfed, with this advancing tide of tielessness. It was always men younger than me who exposed their necks. Coming over the horizon I see a still-younger generation which, in boyhood, conceived the strange notion that shirts are not to be tucked in; they have now reached manhood, and they are doing the same in the workplace. As with P.C. Plod, this is the slippery slope of sartorial degeneracy.

The tie's demise was facilitated by another slippery-slope custom, the geographical origin of which was the more usual one. Just as atmospheric depressions cross the Atlantic from West to East, so, too, the 'dress down Friday' was an American slippery slope. It was a slippery slope, because the boundary between Thursday evening and Friday morning became increasingly fuzzy, porous and grey. Within two decades the whole workplace had rotted to the core; for now it's dress down Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. Previous ages gussied up; ours must gussy down.

However, ties still appear from time to time for specific reasons. There is the man who, starting his new job on Monday morning, abides by the elevated sartorialist norms of former times. But after two or three days going about thus accoutred, and observing the sartorial milieu, he is reassured that, hey, he can go all matey - and without undue risk to his career. Before the week is out, he is a paid-up card-carrying tie-eschewer.

Other types swear unswerving loyalty to ties: these are the careerists; the sufferers of 'promotion anxiety'. The managers, being older men, tend to wear ties; and you ape your boss because, well, you belong in the boss club yourself. You show that you belong; you understand the unwritten dresscode. Other careerists eschew the tie for many years but, once promoted, they rush straight to Tie Rack; following which they are never without their little strips of neck-cloth. These men say, 'Look - I have ascended to the managerial grade; I now give orders rather than take them, and this here tie symbolises the authority bestowed on me'. This treats the tie, as it were, as a mark of rank - like epaulettes or other military insignia. When these men pass me in the office, my lip curls involuntarily.

Similar remarks appertain to many occupations. I knew a retired surgeon who declaimed the wanton tielessness sweeping through his profession. (He had in mind I suppose the consulting room; rather than leaving a trail of blood across an open abdomen.) A tie-less surgeon, he fulminated, was not 'paying his job the appropriate respect'. It was not, according to this way of thinking, about paying his patients the same. Truthfully, the tie is there to project, as it were, a learned profession; to instil an air of competence, probity, authority or whatever. The same can be said of lawyers, accountants, politicians, bankers, etc. The estate agent, for example, when he comes to my house, has pre-wrapped that strip of cloth around his neck. If I asked why he's done that, why he's wearing that strip of cloth, he'd probably have to think about it a bit, before mumbling something or other about conveying professionalism. And he may really believe that.

Correctly, the tie-wearer reveals his readiness to conform to sartorial norms. In my own workplace, for example, when men adopt ties with an eye to promotion, in the hope they'll be recognised as leaders, they reveal themselves as followers. The tie also exploits the credulous; put less generously, tie-wearing panders to a prejudice. It is fallacious appeal - the same reason advertisers hire celebrities to endorse their products. That those celebrities are no more knowledgeable about those products than anyone else, is deemed no impediment. With television game shows I am ready to defer to Carol Vorderman; but she knows no more about margarine than I do.

When my elderly mother went into a medical unit for assessment, the attending physician resembled the shop-floor personnel I see in engineering workshops: collarless tee-shirt; rudely tailored knee-length cargo pants. But this was not a garage! We have come a long way since Sir Lancelot Sprat, the pompous surgeon in Doctor in the House (1954), dressed to the high-nines. Today's high-powered professionals are tatterdemalions . . . but no-one cares! If today's doctors are challenged about this, they'd probably say 'Look - I can wear a nice suit, but it won't make be a better doctor, will it?'

I recognise this argument - I hear it quite regularly in my own occupation. I have even used it myself! I might wear a tie; but my knowledge of turbulent diffusion flames in diesel engines will not improve thereby. Tie-wearers can be smart but also stupid; tie-abstentionists can be scruffy but also smart. This sentence highlights the problem: is smartness in the sartorial sense tied, in some way, to smartness in the cerebral sense? The association of ties with professionalism, competence and authority is surely specious. Resentment at this implied but erroneous association, I have found, is a common reason for tie abstentionism. 'Ties are worn to inspire deference.' 'Ties bestow bogus authority.' 'Ties are a false symbolism.' I used to put it sardonically: 'society no longer credits a man with superior abilities in the professional arena, merely because he wraps a strip of cloth around his neck'.

This line of argument runs into difficulty, when taken to its logical limit. 'My appearance has no bearing whatsoever on my competency'. Hm. When I step onto an airliner, I find it reassuring to be greeted by smartly-attired staff. Let us imagine the captain: he is unshaven; he has slackened his tie; his top button is undone; his shirt is unironed; his tunic carries egg yolk from his breakfast; his shoes are scuffed and dirty; he is chewing gum; he greets us with hands in pockets, while leaning against the cockpit door. This is the acid test, for those who place 'appearance' and 'competence' in entirely different, mutually exclusive boxes. When the subscribers of this belief say: 'Oh, the captain's slovenly appearance is wholly irrelevant - I'm quite happy to trust my life to him, at an altitude of thirty thousand feet in this frail eggshell-like structure.' If I'm to trust my life to the captain, I'd prefer that he's well turned out. I cannot justify this in concrete terms; it's just the way my mind works. I find it hard to have faith in a man's professional ability, if he looks like he's slept under a bridge. I've discussed this association with friends and colleagues over many years, but we've never reached a firm conclusion. This association, it should be said, affects all areas of life. The manufacturers of confectionary for example go to great lengths to ensure their products reach customers in a proper state. They do not say, 'yes, our biscuits and chocolate bars are all broken - but they taste just the same, so stop complaining.'

The tie is a focus of cultural dissent. That is to say, the tie-abstentionists commonly have two motivations: they define themselves in opposition to the 'establishment', whatever that is nowadays, and they reject the association between tie-wearing and professional competency.

Whenever people conform with reluctance to a regulation, they will seek a way of only seeming to conform; so to subvert the conformism. When I was a schoolboy, pupils knotted their school ties as far down the 'fat end' as practical; while making the knot as loose and voluminous as possible. I regarded this practise as absurd, and, as the reader might suspect, I advertised my outsiderdom by knotting my tie properly. (Today, I would probably be the only schoolboy in the country to tuck his shirt in). The teachers left the faddists alone: the regulation was to wear that strip of cloth around the neck, come what may; the way of wearing it was somewhat flexible. When I saw a play set in a tough school, all child actors playing the yobby types wore their ties inappropriately. The one boy wearing his tie properly, was the scholarly and studious type.

Jeremy Corbyn, a life-long tie-abstentionist, faced a horrible dilemma on his election to the Labour leadership. To tie or not to tie? To not tie or to knot tie? To wear a tie would be to kow-tow; but not even he, with his mountainous career in contrarianism, was able to resist the conformist pressure. He therefore wears a tie, but in a fashion that subverts. Revealingly, he is not a tie-slackener in the usual sense. His tie is slackened by just half an inch; enough to expose the top button. It is always just enough; just enough to avoid full conformism. We are therefore left in some doubt. Did he knot his tie properly that morning? Its slippage is then inadvertent, and has gone unnoticed. Or did he say to himself, 'If I really must wear this infernal nuisance, this silly, cumbersome strip of cloth, which symbolises the chains to which workers are shackled by the capitalist succubus, then I flatly refuse to wear it properly.' We cannot answer this question; and that is probably the point. However, John McDonnell, his Marxist lieutenant, is never in a tieless state, and always outshines his boss in the smartness and grooming stakes. (I have not checked what Das Kapital says about ties).

A colleague of mine was a counter-cultural chap: his shoulder-length hair sent a bold enough message. Unsurprisingly, he objected with great zeal to the strips of cloth. The justification he gave to me, was the encumbrance a tie would be when trailing instrumentation cables under desks, etc. Such tasks were, however, technician work and rare in any case; to me this was a weak pretext. While he never said so, he more probably objected to the conformism; to the social regimentation. A day came, though, when he was summoned to Headquarters: a photograph was to be taken for an award ceremony. Although counter-cultural to his DNA's double-helix, even he collapsed beneath irresistible conformist pressure. And so he wore a tie, but for five minutes alone; and since dissent of some form was warranted, even if only a tokenistic one, the accoutrement was a coarse weave of knitted wool. I wonder that he did not try a bootlace, or a piece of old rope.

The tie is attacked on other grounds: namely, sexism. It is a strange irony that, although we're continually badgered about double standards, and how they work against women, there are others, unacknowledged and often unseen, that work against men. Male dress-codes that mandate ties have long escaped censure, when a Twitter-style lynching would ensue, if female dress-codes mandated skirts. Matthew Thompson, a civil servant, was told to wear strips of cloth around his neck, including during hot weather, when women were allowed loose-fitting dresses or blouses. This policy, Matthew Thompson argued, was 'gender stereotyping'; and an industrial tribunal ruled he'd been the victim of 'sexual discrimination'.[1] According to the union, another forty men were awaiting hearings on the same issue, and Matthew Thompson's case had been a 'victory for common sense'. But the Department of Work and Pensions stuck by its dress-code, and said it would appeal. 'We are going to continue to ask our staff to dress in a professional and businesslike way pending the appeal', said an official.

Since then, we've all made a remarkable discovery: gender is not, as everyone has thought for thousands of years, binary; rather it is somewhat 'fluid'. How curious, that no-one realised this before! I guess we're just a whole lot smarter than any previous generation that ever existed. But as a result, the future of the male-female division in dress codes is somewhat indeterminate.

One aspect of this debate has been lost: the occasion. For example, the tie has obtained sanctuary in the job interview. If you're a tie spotter, that is the direction in which to head, along with your notebook, binoculars and anorak.

I cannot remember the advice precisely, when job interviews drew near for me: it was something like: 'You've got to show you're prepared to make the effort', or 'you've got to make the effort', or something like it. To me, this argument was fallacious. A strip of cloth is wrapped around one's neck in under a minute - a few seconds, with some practise. Shouldn't prospective employers, I reasoned, be looking for abilities not so trivially acquired? My education was not achieved quite so easily, as wrapping a strip of cloth around my neck. If I otherwise have what they need, then, would my tieless infraction cost me the job? If ties are not worn in the job, then why should I wear one at the interview for that job? And if ties are worn in the job, then why not just ask me at interview, 'Are you prepared to wear a tie in the job?'

The counter-cultural colleague I mentioned, the one with the knitted tie, gave me the lead in this regard. He had, he insisted, attended job interviews in a tieless state, jobs which he'd subsequently been offered. I was astonished, but lacked his courage. Ties are a kind of hedge: to eschew one at interview might incur a demerit. On the other hand, since tielessness is now so endemic, and since the tide is now going out, I might also incur dislike for wearing one. You cannot hunt with the hare and hunt with the hounds, not if the poacher has turned gamekeeper.

In my own career, it is interviewers and not interviewees who repeatedly transgress. Perhaps this reflects the job market? I must persuade the interviewer to give me the job; it's rather less likely that he'll have to persuade me to take it, because plenty more hopefuls are out there.

I declared to myself that, if I attend just one more damned interview, booted and suited, to find myself facing a sloppy abstentionist, then I'd take my strip of cloth off - and during the interview. The interviewer doesn't wear a tie in his job, so he doesn't see why he should wear one, while interviewing me. It seems to me, however, that if I must recognise the formality of the occasion, then so should he. Resolved thus, I flew to Glasgow to face, to my acute displeasure, two tieless men. The debate raged in my mind, in the background, while I attended to their questions. I copped out - but only partly. Rather than tear the tie from my neck wantonly, I said: 'I see we're not wearing ties - do you mind if I take mine off?' They concurred without demur, one of them shrugging, as if to indicate the strip-of-cloth's irrelevance. And as it happens, I was offered the job.

Let us look again, at why ties are the accoutrement for job interviews. I have already suggested it: a tie recognises the formality of the occasion. All sociologists know what is going on here, and all cultures do it the world over. Smartness has nothing whatsoever to do with it - that is a red herring. Societies distinguish a certain occasion or environment, set it outside other happenings, by choice of clothing - the occasion is thereby invested with special significance. It is why barristers wear wigs and gowns in court. The bewigged barrister is not saying, 'I have special abilities in law, because I wear a wig.' Rather, this practise emphasises that a courtroom is not like 'going down the pub with your mates'. For this reason, we should rue the day that barristers 'go all matey'. I referred earlier to the young man who attends night clubs booted and suited - this practise is called 'dressing up'; and similar arguments apply to weddings and funerals. Of course, the recently bereaved might just as well attend a funeral while dressed in a football strip. Walking into the church or crematorium, his football boots clicking loudly on the tiled floor, he might mutter: 'My attire has got nothing to do with my respect for the dearly departed'; but other mourners might disagree.

After nearly three decades of hostility, I recently re-established cordial relations with the tie - and our rapprochement is working out. That these strips of cloth lack any utilitarian purpose is neither here nor there - they are pleasing on the eye; they finish off one's attire nicely; they add flair to the ensemble; they pull the whole outfit together and lend it coherence. The parallel impression is indisputable amongst those women who, irrespective of the weather, nonetheless wear a scarf: the decorative element adds a nice touch. Since the male wardrobe tends to be more sober and less decorative than the female one, the aesthetic element is more keenly felt. The missing element is also keenly felt: the single-breasted jacket, unbuttoned, presents an empty and unappealing rectangle of shirt to the world. This is a lost opportunity; the silk-festooned neck - such a simple ornamentation - really does make a difference. As the tie recedes from public life, the last scraps of sartorial elegance are going with it.

In my workplace the men, mostly, renounced their strips of cloth years ago: I am therefore the counter-cultural contrarian. I receive comments now and then: and there is a definite gender divide, the compliments coming more from the women, the snide and sarcastic ones more from the men. The 'dapper' compliment is not so easy to explain, if ties lack any smartness-conferring property. Out of earshot, 'just oo the fackin' 'ell does that slag fink 'e is?' has doubtless been uttered, with zeal in due proportion to scruffiness. That is the problem with today's society: I cannot tell the difference between a rough sleeper and a film star.

[1]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/3309125/Telling-men-to-wear-ties-is-sex-discrimination.html

(c) cufwulf

cufwulf@aol.com