There’s life beyond the tie

I love wearing ties. I like to match the colour or pattern of it with another aspect of my ensemble. I have a navy and grey basket weave tie from E. Tautz that goes well with my navy basket weave tweed sports jacket and grey flannel trousers from the great Terry Haste. Or my navy and red regimental tie by Ralph Lauren with my navy pinstripe suit (again by Terry Haste) and red socks. I am one of those sensible sorts that doesn’t like to wear a shirt and jacket without a tie. I think just like going on a well-meaning protest or voting, there is something life-affirming about the perfect dimple created just beneath the knot of the tie. What with our much decommissioned, out of office lives these days, is its perceived stuffiness heading the way of the spat?

It may be described by some as a colonial noose, but truthfully it’s much more than that, it is a cultural and social signifier that the person or place you are interacting with is taken seriously. Well, that is if you’re British. Italians approach wearing a tie in exactly the same way as not wearing a tie. Their louche, relaxed attitude to sartorial matters, dubbed ‘sprezzatura’, means there is no symbolism attached to the wearing of a tie. They could be going to a wedding or doing the weekly shop. Alas in Britain, the tie is seen through the prism of class which is part of the reason why the liberal end of private member’s clubs, namely Soho House, will ask you to remove your tie on entry if you were bourgeois enough to show up wearing one in the first place. That being said it is not necessarily the best place for tips on tie-less sartorialism.

Also, here you cannot get more incongruous than wearing a tie when working from home. The casualisation of work precedes the pandemic, with dress-down Friday getting the ball rolling and John Bercow relaxing tie rules for no conceivable purpose, but may have made him feel better about how he treated Commons staff. Now that flexible working is taking hold, flexibility also applies to presentation across the board. It’s perhaps improper to ask for figures that show a correlation between productivity and wearing a tie but I will let common sense steer your good judgement. Suiting doesn’t seem to be disappearing anytime soon, with tailors making positive noises about the post-lockdown times we are in, and ready-to-wear has seen a marked rise in sales of suits. This can be less down to Zoom meetings and more to the fact that we can now go out and we don’t want to do so in our tracksuits.

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It’s not all bad news though, alternatives are emerging from the woodwork. In the Financial Times How To Spend It magazine a few weeks ago, Nick Foulkes, the most elegantly dressed man in Britain and certainly the most authoritative on classic style wrote about the neckerchief or cravat. From Charvet in Paris to Drake’s and New & Lingwood in London, they are all seeing strong sales for alternative neckwear such as these. To be fair, tailoring has softened too, with fewer customers buying just suits and opting for separates and more adventurous (and versatile) garments. Wearing a tie with these may at times be incorrect but throw in a cravat and that rounds it off nicely. I had a jacket made recently (guess who by) with a Loro Piana jersey material, which has beautiful patch pockets and other tailoring signatures but it’s a jersey weave so feels like a cardigan or sweater. You could wear literally anything underneath and tow that line of comfort and formality perfectly.

There are home remedies also that don’t require you to press reset on your wardrobe. Often it is the shirting rather than the top layer that helps if you don’t want to wear a tie. The denim shit is the most appropriate example. David Gandy has been known to wear a tie with a denim shirt but he’s the Great Gandy so can do whatever he likes. Us laymen need to know our limitations when styling, and the denim shirt is hard to style with a tie. Oxford button-downs are also much better to wear without a tie than a dress shirt. Another solution is to wear a sweater in between the shirt and jacket. This is definitely what I’d call ‘academic chic’, as much as one would like all academics to dress like Indiana Jones, one must be realistic. A dark sweater and lighter jacket are a great combination with a blue or pink shirt. Safari shirts/jackets are not to be worn with a tie and beautiful shawl lapel cardigans are better worn with an open necked shirt too (a cravat would work well here just FYI).

While eschewing the tie is neither inevitable or advised, the caveat is that there are plenty of avenues to explore that keep a gentleman in good and elegant condition. The Spectator has quite rightly understood the concern that many of us have about his and have the good sense to equip you for the impending drama. Throw in a Swaine Adeney Brigg umbrella, a Partagas Lusitania and a pair of Gaziano & Girling tassel loafers and life will begin to make much more sense.