The ultimate tie

Ties are curious things.  At the last count I had forty-six of them, which seems a trifle excessive for something which can only be worn one at a time. What is even stranger is that I wear at most five of them with any regularity.  The others are simply and manifestly impossible.  Some are enormous kipper-like objects; others are indescribable shades of mud-brown; there are unknottable woollen things, slinky silk jobs which once tied cannot be unknotted; and then there are the perfectly suitable ties which have succumbed to the rigours of usage and bear those faint but all- too visible stains.

Looking at this motley collection, it is clear that it represents a cross- section through successive tie-strata of my life, with different eras mapped out by the wildly different tastes.  I recognise the ties from my time at Cambridge, when, as a post-graduate student I attempted to upgrade my sartorial appearance with the aid of a few striking and rather garish ties.  Some of these made it through to my first job, while at the same time new motifs were introduced.  These eventually triumphed, and the tie- paradigm shifted to something nearer its current state.  Most recently, a further attempted upgrade in status has caused a new influx of ties, quite radically different from the previous generation.  I like to think that they are bolder and yet more sophisticated.  In a few year's time, I shall doubtless feel about them as I do about my previous choices. Ties do not age gracefully.

If my own past ties are curious, how much stranger are those we see in shops. Whenever, on the rare occasions I wish to augment my tie collection, I search systematically through the men's clothing shops, I find few examples which I could even consider as candidates.  It is a red-letter day indeed if I do find and buy a tie which I might even wear.

Who on earth wears all those ties?  The ones made of materials which shout cheapness from every stiff pore, and which seem based either on sackcloth or plastic?  Who can want the ties in colours which have no name – unless South American gauchos have come up with them to describe obscure parts of obscure breeds of cattle?  Or the ones with patterns which make Rorschach tests look positively normal?

The dreadful truth has, of course, already been hinted at.  I myself have bought ties which were perilously close to many of these designs.  Only now have a I purged myself of the error which made me guilty of such acts.  It is clear, then, that those ties we all see for sale on the tie-racks, and which never in a month of Sundays could we envision being sold, are indeed bought, and by people just like you and me.  Worse: the ties that we buy must, in their turn, be regarded by the majority of the world as belonging to a similar group of totally inexplicable ties which ought never, in a sane universe, to be produced, let alone sold.  In other words, we are all wearing as ties what for other people are bad nightmares and sick jokes, just as for us, their own choices are crazed and deluded.  And however much the details of our taste differ, it is this terrible, inescapable fact of our mutual bad taste that is the ultimate tie which binds us all together.

(6.3.88)

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