Ties are back – to have and have knot By Sam Leith For You Magazine Published: 08:01, 28 September 2024 | Updated: 08:01, 28 September 2024 e-mail View comments Nothing makes us civilians happier than watching the arbiters of high fashion gnash with rage at the refusal of the public to obey their ridiculous orders. So it is with the good old necktie. We’re told it’s stuffy, outdated, a relic of a previous century when men were expected to be in uniform for business, and it should surely have gone the way of the bowler hat and the periwig.
Yet on it goes, seen at countless menswear shows this year. At luxury e-retailer Mr Porter, reports The Wall Street Journal , tie sales are up 26 per cent year-on-year, indicating that they are still big business for fashion houses. And though the boardrooms of tech companies in the 1990s were, briefly, infested with Armani suits teamed with V-neck T-shirts and baseball boots, that vogue has passed.
The advice I was given as a nipper – round the tree and down the rabbit hole – is as useful today as it ever was. From left: Balmain, Valentino, Junya Watanabe, Saint Laurent and LGN Louis Gabriel Nouchi I feel nothing but relief, personally, at the fact fashion houses are still churning them out. You can’t go far wrong with a tie.
And they last your whole life: your tie rack is a little time capsule. My wardrobe still contains a now moth-eaten square-ended wool tie that belonged to my late grandfather. Old Etonians, MCC and Garrick C.
