I THINK KNOT

Confession: I recently wore a necktie. I don’t know what I was thinking. It was a first date, a midday coffee date, and I was coming straight from a business appointment, so I didn’t have time to change. The young woman, wearing jeans and flats, stared at my necktie as if it were a lobster bib. Her face said: My granddad wore a tie like that.

When we buried him.

That was the moment I came to terms with the painful truth--the necktie is dead. The most dependable male fashion accessory of the last few centuries, the streamer of silk that’s reliably separated the genders-- Diane Keaton and Gertrude Stein notwithstanding--has finally given up the ghost. Let history record that it died quietly, in its sleep. There were no mourners. Except me. And, frankly, I’m bereft.

I find it sad, I find it to be another sign of the dark age in which we live, that I can’t even remember the last time I saw a man wearing a necktie, unless he was taking my order at TGI Friday’s, or talking angrily about something on TV. Waiters and haters, that’s what the necktie is down to.

Occasionally I go somewhere--theater, wedding, press conference--expecting to see at least one vestigial necktie, and invariably I find myself surrounded by bare-necked Peter Pan complexes who are deliberately dressed as pro skateboarders, reality show rejects and pimps. Can someone tell me exactly when it became socially acceptable to attend a formal event in a pair of cross-trainers? Or a funeral in a Pittsburgh Steelers jersey? (At least it’s black.) I want to mark that day on my calendar and honor it each year by not getting out of bed.

Doctors, students, lawyers, reporters, actors, agents, hobos, freaks, we all look pretty much the same now. We all look underemployed and underwhelmed. We look disheveled, unkempt, uncombed, as if we don’t care, which is the point, I think, the insidious message of this new dress code. It’s uncool to look as if you care.

That’s why I think the necktie’s disappearance isn’t a trivial matter but typical of a general erosion, an overall loss of decorum, of cultural niceties like decency and courtesy and manners and attention to detail. These are the unseen casualties in this societal shift to casualness.

As a rule I’m not resistant to change. I’m cool with the wildcard in baseball, I’m resigned to the disappearance of longstanding cultural artifacts such as phone booths and Walkmans. Life is change. Change is good. Usually. But this necktie thing cuts deeper, because I’ve loved neckties since I was a kid. I used to think wearing a necktie was a rite of passage, and a treat. I thought the necktie was a mystic cord that connected me to countless generations of men by a series of magic knots, and part of me still thinks so. And I think we cut such cords at our great peril.

Though I’ve yielded to Fashion, though I’ve grudgingly forsaken my habit of wearing a necktie to the office, though I’m wearing torn jeans and a sweater as I write this, deep down I’ll always believe the male Homo sapiens looks better with a dash of color under his chin. I believe a man--like a country, and a ship--should fly a flag.

Besides looking better, well-dressed men often think better. Keats, in a famous letter, described his habit of gussying up when he felt down: “Whenever I find myself growing vapourish, I rouse myself, wash and put on a clean shirt brush my hair and clothes, tie my shoestrings neatly and in fact adonize as I were going out--then all clean and comfortable I sit down to write. This I find the greatest relief.”

I feel you, dog.

Of course, the necktie has been eulogized before. It died in the ‘60s, it died in the ‘70s, and always it came roaring back to life with a Windsor-knotted vengeance. But this death seems different, because so many people are indifferent to it. Women I know say good riddance, that neckties make men look stuffy. Most of the men I know can’t even knot one properly. A few cover for their ignorance by grumbling about health risks, vascular constriction in the neck and so forth. When men dig at their collars and talk blood flow, that’s the final death knell for neckwear. Look out, gold chains. You’re next.

My friend, who lives in a treeless, tieless Midwestern city, reports that a man can now arrive at the fanciest local restaurant wearing an “I Choked Linda Lovelace” T-shirt and still be seated at the best table. My friend reports this disturbing fact in a tone that indicates the End of Days are at hand. He makes a valid point.

Never mind the future; think of the history we’re losing. The necktie is said to trace its roots to ancient China. It’s appeared in every Golden Age, from Caesar’s Rome to Napoleon’s Paris to Beau Brummel’s England. Granted, those neckties were more akin to cravats. Only in the last century or so did this thing Americans call a “tie” get modernized, popularized and smartly knotted with a four-in-hand. Come to think of it, the rise of the modern necktie has coincided neatly with America’s rise.

And the necktie’s fall . . . ?

Coincidence?

Maybe. Maybe not.

I riffled through my neckties the other day, saying goodbye. They hang from a giant hook on the back of my bedroom door, a host of silken ghosts, whispering accusingly. They call me coward, conformist. They implore me to press on, keep wearing them, buck the trend. But I can’t be the Last of the Necktied Mohicans. I don’t want to turn into some eccentric dandy, some maverick Orville Redenbacher.

While flipping through my neckties I flashed through the memories they hold. This book party, that rehearsal dinner. Every necktie calls to mind some big night, because every necktie was the start of some big night. Knotting a necktie moments before walking out of the house was always my signal to the adrenal gland, to the sub-cortex, to the dog, letting them know: “It’s show time!”

I no longer have the necktie my ex-girlfriend gave me one long-ago Christmas, the prettiest necktie I ever owned. But I can still close my eyes and see its muted pattern of spoked wheels, dark navy blue and forest green. Its silk was sensuously soft--she bought it at Paul Stuart, the fine men’s store in Manhattan. I can feel the heft of the cardboard box in which it came, heavy and true as an antique blanket chest. I wore it that Christmas night, and the next time I met her father, and for several job interviews that spring. I wore it after we broke up, as if it were a totem that might bring her back. When the fabric frayed, when the realization dawned that the girlfriend was never to return, I still couldn’t bear to throw her necktie out. So I folded it into the heavy box, stashed it in the back of a closet, and waited for the day when the silk and colors and memories would fade and lose their hold on me.

Mercifully, moths hastened that day.

I wish I could think of a proper way to dispose of my memory-laden neckties now. I can’t stash them in the back of a closet. They take up too much room. Besides, I don’t want them around. They seem slightly disreputable. They carry a certain taint. It’s like owning a driveway full of DeLoreans, or a bunch of bongs.

Nor can I give them to Goodwill. Could anything be more ludicrous? If a necktie is useless for the average man, it’s thoughtless for the man who’s down on his luck.

Among my neckties, I have several tuxedo bow ties. I remembered, years ago, while rushing to get dressed for a formal affair, I couldn’t knot my bow tie. I phoned Brooks Brothers on Madison Avenue, frantic. It was well after closing time, but the salesman calmly told me to come down, meet him at the back door, and he’d knot my bow tie for me.

Good old Brooks Brothers. If anyone could sympathize with me about the necktie, advise me what to do with my obsolete collection, it would be someone there.

I phoned corporate headquarters and spoke with Jeff Blee, manager for men’s furnishings. I asked how he felt about the death of the necktie.

Death? he said. What death? Brooks Brothers sold more neckties last year than the year before. Look at all the big stars, he said. Kanye West. Justin Timberlake. They’re wearing neckties at awards shows.

Fine, sure, good for Kanye. But what about John Q. Public?

“I’m not going to sit here and say it’s the heyday of the tie,” Blee said, and he suddenly sounded downcast. For me the necktie was an accessory, for him it was a raison d’etre.

Then he regrouped, saying cheerfully that while the necktie might not enjoy the central role it once did, pronouncing it dead is dead wrong. The necktie is alive and well, he said, not just in New York but also unlikely places like Texas. He offered to read me sales figures from the store in Houston.

I cut him off.

“Let me ask you an unfair question,” I said. “Are you wearing a necktie right now?”

Pause.

“I’m not wearing one,” he said quietly.

You have to admire a man that honest. Only a man who spent his life wearing beautiful neckties could have shown such integrity.

He added quickly that he bought five new neckties the other day.

Yeah, I said, but you probably get a serious employee discount.

True, he said. “But I did buy them. With my hard-earned money. And the point is, believe me, I don’t need another tie.”

A man after my own heart--even though he doesn’t see the basic problem.

None of us needs another necktie.

And it’s hard to imagine a time when we ever will.