I'm becoming a little alarmed at the possibility of having a useless tie collection. I've not had a really good reason to regularly wear a necktie for several years now, but secretly, I harbor a seriously deep-seated ambition to get dressed up. I don't know exactly where it came from, but I'm thankful for it in that it let me comfortably make it through situations like having to occasionally wear a tuxedo to high school (there were daytime show choir performances, you see). I loved putting that thing on -- which is maybe a sign of some other issues -- but for now, we're going to focus on the ties.
At times, it's a real disappointment that I don't get to wear ties more often. Working most of my career in a field where dress code is generally the lowest common denominator combined with what seems to be a general nationwide slackening of business standards has seen to it that I don't have much use for them. In fact, the only job I have had to date that required me to wear a necktie at all times was when I worked part-time for Barnes & Noble -- some of us jokingly maintained that we were superior to other chains like Borders, whose employees were clearly a bunch of unwashed hippies. So you can imagine my general level of horror and outrage when the day came to pass that the tie requirement was lifted, leaving us mucking about with open collars.
I often kept on wearing a tie anyhow. One has to have standards.
The two years or so that I worked under the tie requirement enabled me to get, shall we say, "aggressive" in my purchase of neckwear. I fell over myself to find really fun and unusual novelty ties, because when you're 20-something with a geeky sense of humor, that's what you do. A lot of my ties -- while I now openly admit are profoundly awful and would make a sartorialist's head explode -- still drew compliments from customers and coworkers for being clever. It was my thing -- I was the guy with dozens of fun ties. I was generally surprised that it didn't make me more appealing to the ladies.
It's now about seven years after the fact, and a combination of my own maturation (unlikely, but true) with things like having a wife who won't let her husband be seen in anything remotely stupid has left my neckwear decimated on the frivolous front. Now I own many more subtle ties and focus on color, pattern -- all that crud that, you know, you're supposed to do. Problem being that I still don't have an excuse to wear the darn things, because now we appear to be in a society where ties are only worn by politicians, CEOs, and spiky-haired post-teenage types that write bad poetry and song lyrics. Often times, you're just as likely to see people in those categories NOT wearing one. This wouldn't be a problem for me except that now whenever I choose to wear a tie just for the heck of it, I'm suddenly forced to fend off an unending litany of questions like, "Why are you wearing a tie?"
To make matters worse, an answer along the lines of, "I just kind of felt like it," will make people regard you like you're from Mars. It's possible that I am something of an aberration at this point, but now that I'm at a stage in my life where it's not really acceptable to wear T-shirts with clever messages on them all the time (yes, I still wear them some of the time), a really interesting necktie is about all I've got left in terms of personal expression in my wardrobe.
So at this point, I'm waiting and hoping for some kind of paradigm shift, something that brings the national fashion meter back a little toward "classy." I'm not asking for three-piece suits every day, maybe just a little more leeway to go nuts and throw on a cravat for the hell of it. After spending so many years assembling and refining a tie collection to cover all my bases, I'd really hate for it to be all for naught.
Some of what's in my closet -- click a thumbnail to see the full image.
