It’s Bow Ties That Bind the Truly Adventurous

I’m looking around my office and half of my male colleagues are wearing ties.

But only one of us--the guy pictured at left--is in a bow tie.

And like any bow-tie wearer, I like it that way.

Four-in-hand tie widths grow and shrink, and patterns change. But the bow tie is the Old Faithful of the neckwear world.

A wise man once explained their charm: Bow ties are never really in style, nor are they ever really out of it.

Some of the world’s greatest men have worn bow ties--Churchill, Schweitzer, Edison and Marx (Karl and Groucho).

Doctors favor bow ties because they don’t fall onto their patients. Professors like them because they look scholarly. Lawyers, judges, architects and a few journalists are also fond of bows.

In Ventura County, you’ll see bows on New West Symphony Conductor Boris Brott, Conejo Valley Unified Supt. Jerry Gross, Superior Court Judge Harry Walsh and retired Judge William Peck, among others.

“It’s that individual wanting to be noticed,” said Bill Kenerson, president of Beau Ties Ltd., a mail-order company in Vermont. “He’s very confident in himself that he can pull it off. Certainly if you’re going to wear a bow tie, you’re going to be noticed.”

Though most people are impressed when a man can tie his own bow tie--neckwear referees will penalize you for clipping--the bow’s origami in silk can also connote pretentiousness and even shiftiness.

But we bow tie wearers are willing to brave even the calumnies and ostracism of our fellows--tied and untied--for fashion.

Peck began wearing bow ties in the ‘50s when he was a trial attorney. Worried that juries would turn against him, he went back to four-in-hands. Once Peck took the bench, the bow ties returned for good.

“They don’t blow in your face when the wind’s blowing. They don’t drop in your soup,” he said.

As for those who wear clip-ons, “They’re pretty phony,” Peck scoffed. “You want to insult me? Ask me if it’s a clip-on.”

Despite my suspicion that few men in California wear bow ties--many don’t wear a tie at all--Kenerson said the geographic distribution of his mailing list is fairly even.

A recent catalog featured a Ford dealer in Glendale who credits his sales success to his oversized bows and a 75-year-old Bay Area doctor who has worn bow ties since grade school.

“We have a goodly number [of customers] in California,” Kenerson told me. (Only a true bow tie wearer would say “goodly.”)

Still, he said, bow ties represent only 2 or 3% of all ties sold.

At times Kenerson’s catalog reads like a manifesto for the bow tie cult (Maybe this is Karl Marx’s influence.) A cartoon in a recent catalog threatened that men in four-in-hand ties can be easily strangled.

The company’s Web site proclaims: “Our foremost goal . . . is to continue to search out all of the bow tie wearers of the world and add them to our mailing list. Once we think that goal is achieved, then we will concentrate on converting the misguided wearers of 4-in-hand ties.”

But Kenerson is not out to change the world.

“If everybody wore bow ties,” he said, “I think it would lessen the appeal for those of us who are dyed-in-the-wool bow tie wearers.”

I’m trying to make a few cravat conversions myself, even trying to teach the delicate construction of the bow to a Times colleague who describes himself as an Okie who grew up in overalls.

So far, I’ve had little success, but that won’t deter me, convinced in my pretentious, shifty way that even a farm boy is fit to be tied.

My proudest conversion is Jerry Gross, who now owns a dozen bows and turns heads throughout the Conejo Valley’s schools.

Almost overnight, with a bulk purchase, Jerry joined the bow brethren. “Now,” he said, showing me a closetful of four-in-hands recently, “what do I do with these?”

I say wear them. Lacking enough bow ties in my own closet for sufficient variety, I wear a bow tie to work only on Wednesdays. Since I also wear long ties, dyed-in-the-wool wearers might dismiss me as “bi-tie.”

They might accuse me of vacillating, sort of like alternating between boxers and briefs.

“We find a lot of our customers are not mixed wearers,” Kenerson said, diplomatically masking his disappointment in me. Still, “You can wear any tie you feel comfortable with. That’s the test for bow-tie wearers--you have to feel comfortable with it.”

Massie Ritsch is a Times Community News staff writer. His e-mail is Massie.Ritsch@latimes.com.