The Ties that Bind

Being a boulevardier of the Old School, I spend a considerable amount of time ambling the streets of London, an abstracted smile playing around my finely-chiselled lips, my mind dwelling perhaps on some nice point of Shafi'i jurisprudence, or composing a sonnet, or considering the relative merits of the Fokker and CC Interrupter gears in terms of the aerial battles of the Great War, or mulling on which of my numerous enemies to move against next. Nothing, you will agree, out of the ordinary.

But my thoughts have of late been rudely disturbed by the realisation that with every week, I pass fewer and fewer gentlemen wearing ties. The number of suits has thankfully remained constant (as, regrettably, has the quality of those suits) but the Englishman, or at least the Londoner, seems to have decided that a tie is not only unnecessary, but anathema.

And so one sees an endless parade of open-necked shirts. Indeed, a sort of uniform seems to have evolved. Take a two-button, two piece suit in grey worsted (make sure the worsted is too light to hang well, and the suit is ill-cut and ill-fitting). Pair it with a light blue or pale grey shirt, probably with a cutaway collar. Leave two buttons undone at the neck and presto! The Look of the Moment!

Now, I am a tolerant man. But this sort of thing has got to stop. The “cheap suit but no tie” look was, in my youth, the jealously guarded preserve of irish barmen and junior employees of the post office. They little imagined that they would one day be retrospectively appointed as style icons. And with good reason.

I should perhaps begin by conceding that omitting a tie from one's ensemble is comfortable . I do not deny this. Indeed, as an asthmatic, I find it can assist breathing and so sometimes concede defeat and go open-collared myself. But I do so grudgingly, shamefacedly. I do so in the knowledge that chronic illness has forced yet another concession from me (God knows, I have become inured to the petty defeats and humiliations piled upon me by a callous and relentless fate). And when I do this, I do not wear a bloody suit. I wear a jacket and trousers and embrace the fact that in doing so, I look an utter cad.

The first problem is that the average British Male does not grasp how to wear a shirt without a tie. He has some shirts for work. They are plain and simple, as this is safe and they do not clash with the grubby handful of crumpled ties he owns. When he is told he need not wear a tie to work, he simply wears his usual dull shirts with the collar open. Obviously, it falls to one side, exposing a pasty, wrinkled neck. The collar tucks itself away under the lapel of his suit. He tries one button open. He tries two. It looks awful, but it is comfortable. He gives up and goes to work. This is how it starts. A month later, our drone is complaining bitterly if he is required (for a court appearance, say, or perhaps a wedding) to wear a tie again. He struggles with the knot. He gasps for air when it is completed. Inevitably, he will dip the tie in a coffee at some point. He has become decadent, corrupted by ease and convenience. He has become yet another slave to functionality.

And yet he knows (because the evidence is there in the mirror every morning) that, comfortable or not, he looks awful. But he does not understand why. Poor drone. He cannot see that the abandonment of the tie requires a new philosophy of shirts and collars. He does not understand that in setting the tie aside, he has foolishly thrown away the one piece of colour, of display, that even the most conservative and reactionary of employers dare not deny him. He has not grasped that he has plucked away, with his own hands, his peacock’s tail. That he has discarded the solution to the knotty problem of what one does with a saggy, wattled, middle-aged neck and all-too-expansive double chin. He has, if I may make an apposite Scriptural reference, sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.

And all in pursuit of the nonsensical concepts of “comfort” and “convenience”. Does our drone not gasp that it is necessary to suffer to be beautiful? That we are not put upon this earth to enjoy ourselves? That we have a duty, common to all mankind, to fight against functionalism, mediocrity and drabness with every means at our disposal. Hmm?

Clearly not.

Consider the wealthier and more raffish inhabitants of the Great Wen. They are able to carry off this look with more success. If the City of London Male is flamboyant in one area, it is his shirts. Bright stripes and checks are commonplace in the Square Mile. This, I feel, is half of the battle. They wear shirts that do not fade into the background like maiden aunts, but (to stretch the metaphor) like the sort of aunt who has one sherry too many and shows their bloomers on the bus.

If ties are to be foresworn (and I hope with all my heart they are not) then let our common or garden office workers at least dare to wear something bolder. And as a minimum, let them wear a button down collar, or a two-button Italian collar that will stand properly without a tie. At least then the shirts will hide those awful, scraggy necks.

But these are mere palliatives, symptomatic prescriptions that do not address the cause of the ailment. The truth is that those amongst us who care about these things must be silent no more. We must work tirelessly for the introduction of sumptuary laws prohibiting the wearing of suits without ties. We must lobby for an end to the scandalous practice of sending young men out into the world with no more than an hours’ basic training in tie-knotting and selection. We must demand that the youth of Britain receives at least two nights’ compulsory sartorial training every week from the years 14-18, with refresher courses for men every five years until they reach 60.

This may seem draconian, even desperate, but I warn you now, our backs are to the wall. For if we do not take up this struggle, if we do not fight on the beaches, and in the hills and the landing grounds, the tie will go the way of the gentleman’s hat, and be consigned to sartorial history.

And none of us, surely, want that?