Would you wear a tie like Melania and me?

I have been kippered. And I am not the only one. The front row has been wearing ties — by which I mean the variety traditionally worn by men — like they are going out of fashion.

Which, of course, oddly enough, they are. Fewer men than ever are wearing them in the workplace. Tie sales reached their peak in the mid-1990s.

The set of qualities they used to signal — professionalism, competency, efficiency — can now, depending on one’s context, be offset by some other less desirable ones. Out of date, uptight, irrelevant. Even Ermenegildo Zegna, CEO of the posh tailoring brand Zegna, has given up on ties.

“Let me be clear: the suit is not dead,” Zegna said at a luxury conference in 2022. “But the tie is!”.