April 3, 2023
Greetings from the sartorial splendor,
Rock Hudson taught me how to tie a necktie.
Payphone booths, jukeboxes, paper maps, smoking sections on airplanes, mixtapes, getting ‘doubles’ when you got your film developed. This is the beginning of a long list of things that would require significant explanation to children born today. We might add the necktie to the list.
For most of my life, going to work meant wearing a tie. It was not the only symbol of my career, but it was one of the most evident and lasting emblems. It matched the other standards I grew to think of as important in my professional life.
In the early ’70s, there was a TV series called ‘McMillan and Wife’, starring Rock Hudson, as a crime-solving police commissioner, with his charming sidekick wife, Susan St. James. I have little memory of the series other than watching Rock put on a tie, usually while trading clever banter with his spouse. For some reason, it feels like it was several times in every episode.
That’s how I learned how to tie a tie, watching Rock Hudson get ready to go to work or head to some social event. I don’t know why I picked it up then, or what tie I used to practice. I didn’t put the skill to work for another decade or so, but it stuck with me.
Before then, I usually saw the tie as a sign of elegant style, generally worn by the suave and debonair. James Bond wore a tie. Cary Grant wore a tie. Fred Astaire wore a tie. My Dad wore a tie. I’ll point out this was during an era when many thought that the turtleneck would replace the necktie. It did not.
When I reached a certain age where I began working seriously, I put on a tie. I practiced knotting it carefully, recreating the perfection that Rock Hudson taught me. I preferred a half-Windsor knot, and I made sure it was neat and correct. The tie was part of my uniform, so to speak. I felt it gave me an identity, a credibility. I wore silk ties and kept pace with the fashion of both style and width.
For four decades going to work meant putting on a tie. The truth is that even though this was not my natural choice, I didn’t resent it, in fact, I was proud of it. It’s not a secret that in the first months of my job, I had to buy my ties, and shirts, from Goodwill, which will probably leech a little of the debonair from the impression. But the tie set the tone for me, set a quality to point toward. It also gave me the confidence that I needed.
I felt like my appearance mattered, the impression I made mattered in order to create the influence I wanted. I was in an industry where people cared about style, and to look unkempt, or casual even, could be distracting. It was part of the persona, of professionalism, a standard that was set long before I knotted my first silk.
Fashion is fickle, and the priorities of our culture wax and wane. Attire in the workplace took a more casual turn. Over time, as fewer men wore ties, it became more important to me to maintain the tradition. Not to change culture, but to protect my own.
I belonged to a national organization that held conferences twice a year, where it would be typical for more than a thousand people to be in a session meeting. In the last ten years, there were only two people in those meetings who wore ties, and I outlasted the other guy. When I left, it was the end of the tie era, which was not heralded, or truthfully, noticed.
Covid changed things even more dramatically for most industries, including the sliver of the world that still wore knotted strips of cloth around their neck. So perhaps the tie has gone from the norm, but anyone who remembers Nehru jackets, bell bottom slacks, platform shoes, and leisure suits will recognize that the necktie has outlasted those trends.
I graduated from my other career last June, and I can tell you exactly how many times I have worn a tie: twice. Both times for funerals. I don’t resent them or miss them. It is simply an accessory that hasn’t been called for, but it hasn’t changed my respect for the tie.
Before long the idea of wearing a necktie will be as quaint as spats or ascots. I think that men will wear them for special occasions, which should tell us something too. But for now, the idea that they will be the norm in business settings has passed. Or at least retired to the drawing room.
It could be that ties will make a comeback, the fashion world has predicted their demise about every decade since anyone cared to write about it. I’ll admit my interest in fashion has narrowed to running shoes and denim, so I no longer have skin in the game. Someone let me know how it turns out.
Over 12,000 times I knotted my tie. Chose a paisley or pin dot or Regiment Stripe or foulard, stood in front of the mirror and wound the fabric into the knot that Rock Hudson, or James Bond, would be proud of. Going to work meant wearing a tie. Three hundred and five days ago, I wore my last tie to work. It took me a total of one day to become accustomed to that truth. That said, I am grateful to have worn one, and to be part of a stylish tradition.
Hope this finds you dressed for success,
David
Copyright © 2023 David Smith
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