Hail to the Dimple

Every son struggles to create an identity separate from his father’s, as you can tell from how the president usually knots his necktie.

They have so much in common, these New England-born, Yale-graduated, Texas-bound, military pilots/oil executives/commanders in chief, that it is no surprise the son would step out of the paternal shadow with a necktie, whose only purpose, after all, is to signify. Curiously, this sartorial act of defiance involves an item already associated with George W. Bush’s rise to the presidency: the dimple. Like a ballot that bears a dimple, a necktie that sports a cunning little hollow just below the knot may be legitimate in some circles, but unacceptable in others. To dimple or not is the questionNfor the president and other men east of the 405 Freeway, where neckties are still worn.

In an unscientific sampling of news photos taken in recent years, George W. Bush most often wears his necktie with a rather trim knot that yields a dimple, a staple of contemporary dress. In contrast, his father generally wears a seemingly looser knot with a smooth, undented finish, which is the more traditional look of the Eastern elite.

Further research will be needed to confirm those impressions, given that both men have been documented wearing each knot style. Also, it will be left to future scholars to determine if the current president was more or less inclined to sport a necktie dimple--sometimes called a fluke--during the Florida vote controversy, and, if so, what’s up with that?

Cravat caveats aside, it would seem worthwhile to explore the dimple’s depths, the better to understand the leader of the free world, or just to help a guy dress. Still, a review of several histories of clothing that go on and on about the necktie, that most useless and thus most symbolic item of men’s apparel, turns up nothing about the dimple’s origins. Yet it clearly plays a role in the necktie’s intricate friend-or-foe signaling, which can convey a man’s taste, wealth, club memberships, schools attended, military service, vocation, hipness, native country or region, travels abroad and so forth. That was the tie’s job, remember, prior to the invention of the printed T-shirt.

What messages does a dimple send? First, that its wearer is sharp, maybe elegant. See Fred Astaire, dandy of dandies, sporting a boutonniere and a cinched, dimpled necktie in one publicity still. Or Cary Grant, personification of style, who knotted his satin ties in a way that mirrored his famously dimpled chin.

Molly Maginnis, a costume designer in Los Angeles who has dressed Warren Beatty (“Town and Country”) and Jack Nicholson (“As Good As It Gets”), views the dimple as dashing. “It’s much more sophisticated if you can get that dimple,” she says. “It makes the tie look neater.”

Ditto for the Ben Silver shop in Charleston, S.C., known for its fine neckwear. “To tie a knot perfectly,” the store’s Web site advises, “be sure to pull up the knot smartly so as to create a dimple.”

Second, the dimple has an undertone of sensuality. Might this smooth crease, this bit of cleavage, this silken groove, evoke areas of the human body that arouse special interest? Just contemplating the thing seems to make some writers weak in the knees. “A beautiful effect can be obtained by using the index finger to press a slight convex cavity into the tie just below the knot,” writes Francois Chaille in his 1996 “The Book of Ties.” Steamy, huh?

Finally, the dimple is popular--and populist. A quick check of fashion magazines, menswear ads, friends and co-workers suggests that dimpled ties outnumber plain ones at least three to one. Hard to say why, but the dimple is one of the few flourishes still available to men. If the story of men’s fashion is largely one of eliminating finery--seen any spats lately? bowlers? watch chains? tie pins?--maybe men are clinging to the dimple as an endangered species of display, a flourish atop the flourish that is the necktie, a last-ditch flamboyance amid the casualized drabness of these khaki times.

Given the dimple’s appeal, the president’s embrace of it would hardly be noteworthy if he weren’t breaking from his father’s style, the WASP Ivy League look, which is marked by calculated understatement that disdains the dimple.

That sensibility was amply confirmed by a friend in his 70s, a member of the Harvard College class of ‘49, who is rarely seen in public without a necktie, which he most definitely does not mar with a dimple. An “affectation,” he calls it. “Too precious.” Anti-style, as perfected by the American elite, has important links to the British upper class, which also seems to have largely eschewed the dimple. A friend who attended boarding school in England recalls that the institution’s dress code prohibited a dimple in the required four-in-hand necktie. In “Gentleman,” a 1999 picture book on proper English comportment, plainly knotted ties outnumber dimpled ones roughly 20 to one. The Duke of Windsor, who so influenced English fashion in the last century that the knot he tied was mistakenly named after him, went dimpleless. (He actually used a four-in-hand knot, but favored a necktie with such a thick lining that it resembled the knot that came to be known as the Windsor.)

Which brings us, of course, to today’s arbiter of class, Regis Philbin. Last September, George W. Bush appeared on “Live with Regis” wearing a matching purple shirt and necktie with a Grand Canyon dimple--a spoof of the host’s trademark outfit and a key moment in dimplology.

It captured the dimple’s interesting mixture of pizazz, sex appeal (mostly women watch the show) and mass appeal. It distinguished the privileged son from his staid father, whom it is hard to imagine preening in an eggplant ensemble. It did away with any notion that GWB is indifferent to how he knots his necktie, that the intriguing coming and going of the dimple is mere accident. And it showed, seven weeks before the election, that the younger Bush could make a dimple count when he needed it.