How astonishing it is that the tie survives. But for how much longer?
In the days after World War II, a man was more likely to go out without a tie than without a hat. Now, the fedora is forgotten by all but fops and determined fogies. By comparison, though the silk knot continues to slip bit by bit, the tie remains — if just barely — a conventional part of a civilized man’s costume.
Recently the Wall Street Journal offered one of those eulogies for the dear, departed necktie that, plausible as they may be, keep proving premature. “Wall Street, the last bastion of traditional corporate dress code,” the Journal observed, “has been loosening its tie — and in some cases, getting rid of it completely.”
Exhibit A is David Solomon, the new head of Goldman Sachs Group. This fall he spoke at a California business conference and did so sans cravat.
Old Walter Sachs would not have approved. (In the late ’40s he still insisted his employees wear, throughout the summer, dark wool suits in the firm’s sweltering, un-air-conditioned offices. And by “wear” he didn’t mean any of this jacket over the back of your chair nonsense.)
But losing the ties is seen as necessary, if one is going to do business with left-coast techies. Bankers may not be advised to adopt the full hoodie and T-shirt rig, but adapting their dress to the sensibilities of their customers has its advantages.
The change is reflected not only in the clothing of the money people but in the architecture of their banks. Once upon a time, branches were built in a style one might call “Government Greek,” an idiom meant to convey the durability of temples from antiquity. Now Capital One is refashioning its branches as cafes, places as much to get coffee as cash. And why not? One could argue that, if you’re trying to evoke institutional solidity and stability, you’re better off looking like a Starbucks than a federal office building.
As work clothes become ever more casual, what room does that leave for dressing in ways that signal you’re not at work? It may feel liberating to dress as if every day is vacation. But it comes with a price: Blur work life and personal life, and you make it harder to carve out and defend time for family and friends or even just yourself.
Women do a better job, I think, than men in maintaining a distinction between their work uniform and the mufti of their choice. Can men learn from them? Is there a masculine equivalent of the party frock?
I wonder whether the wearing of ties, should they fully disappear from the office, will become an essential part of how to dress when not in a professional setting. What, for example, should you wear to a proper dinner party? A tie signals a social occasion special enough to dress up for. A tie shows regard for one’s hosts and fellow guests.
Business may be increasingly casual, but that’s no reason not to dress better for ourselves and for our friends than we do for work. That may mean embracing the sturdy tie or using other clothes to elevate our leisure time. I have found that a good book read in an old tweed jacket is better than the same book read in sweats.
Perhaps dressing is not exclusively about signaling this or that to business associates or friends. It can be about expressing, even just to yourself, what your style and standards are. My tweedy self is in a scholarly frame of mind; my sweats self is a lazy bum.
As jacket and tie are abandoned to make the office less formal, let’s rescue them for our personal sartorial pleasure. They just may prove a way to declare that our private lives are worthy of fashion we wouldn’t waste on the dull, old workplace.
Now, where did I put my fedora?
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
