My daughter began using a tie to secondary school. It was part of her uniform. I told her that the tie, in the wild, had died out by the late twentieth century, and she didn’t believe me. She said her school still requires ties. And she’d watched programs on tv with black tie events. So she said,
‘What do you mean, it’s extinct?’
Those are domesticated ties, I explained, which continue to live in extremely limited circumstances and places.
But I’d been out and about during the late 20th Century and the tie was a thriving species back then, found in offices and industries and on the street and stages. We even used it ourselves as part of our work attire. I remember having several ties and trying to match them to my shirts during the work week. Our clients were also formally dressed, in corporate offices and meetings. On the streets, in towns all over the country and in the region, I’d seen people walking about with all sorts of living things around their necks.
Security personnel. Salesmen. Boarding School boys in town after classes. They all wore a variety of ties. I’d seen men (and women, looking for ties for the men in their lives) hang about department stores, holding and feeling ties, occasionally holding one up against their chest to look at the reflection in the mirror. At the end of a working day, someone would have their tie removed, folded and tucked into their breast pocket, with a triangle of colour sticking up. Or wear it loose with an unbuttoned collar, like a noose.
All this had happened and then, I began noticing in the early years of the new century that clients began to prefer a more casual look. Short-sleeved or long-sleeved shirts yes. Shirts yes, but no tie. Jeans showed up on Fridays and then gradually creeped into other days of the week. T-shirts, more comfortable and fashionable, became a common sight. Slowly, gradually, the tie began dying out. We – my colleagues and I – began using the tie less. We found that we were too formal, unnecessarily so. Removing the tie while wearing long or short sleeved shirts allowed us to maintain a sense of professionalism while not appearing too crusty.
The tie, in its many colours and patterns, disappeared from my cupboard. Completely. I stopped using that article of clothing. No shopping for it. In fact, I’d stopped noticing it when I went to department stores, although no doubt, they still kept a menagerie of ties. It disappeared from most of our electronic screens and pages. The tie disappeared from the streets and nearly all of our clients’ offices and board rooms and meeting rooms. We’d know who were the senior personnel by their long or short sleeved shirts and that was enough. There was no need for the tie to formalise things. The position. The authority.
And so, in the wild, the tie became extinct. It only now could be seen in certain environments. Certain places. Schools. Special events. I’d think of these ties as the domesticated variety. The wild ones had gone. And I’d seen it happen.
photo from unsplash.com by Glodi Miessi