Hasn’t the tie been through enough? It has been declared “dead” in more news articles than are worth recounting. And many of its trustiest backers — former presidents, banking executives, news anchors and sitting senators — want nothing to do with it.
But now this beleaguered strip of silk is suffering a fresh indignity. The indignity of trying to appear hip.
In recent months, celebrities and fashion designers have been conceiving increasingly contrived ways to wear the necktie. It is no longer enough to loop a tie and soberly tuck it beneath your collar. You must pop your shirt collar à la Dracula, knot the tie in some origami-like construction or flip it backward to flaunt the brand tag, as many models did during Jonathan Anderson’s debut Dior show in June.
Or follow the stylist Harry Lambert at the Fashion Awards in London and wear the tie halfway undone like an over-it prep schooler. Or flop it over one’s collar and then over a sweater, as ASAP Rocky did in Miami this month. (A red-and-black striped tie worn on top of one’s clothes? Welcome back circa 2002 Avril Lavigne!)
“It’s this sort of striving for relevance, isn’t it?” said Michael Hill, the creative director of Drake’s, a men’s clothier in London founded in 1977. Mr. Hill, a genteel Brit, was loath to criticize how other brands might reorient their ties to bait shoppers. And certainly, what’s considered tasteful in neckwear has evolved: Bouffant cravats were the vogue of Oscar Wilde’s day, and you don’t see those much anymore.
Still, Mr. Hill saw these present-day contortions as “quite obvious” maneuvers to make the tie feel novel again. Even he doesn’t wear a tie every day anymore. Drake’s tie sales, he said, are steady — not dipping, but not growing, either.
“Rocky might as well be wearing a scarf,” said Scott Sternberg, who in 2004 founded Band of Outsiders, a persnickety and preppy men’s fashion brand. Band’s ties, shrunken to the width of a business card, were viewed as urgent by its youngish clients. They bought them by the bundle.
“We were taking it out of the office,” Mr. Sternberg said. “Putting it in the context of something you wear casually.”
By the time Mr. Sternberg left the brand in 2015, Band’s tie sales had withered. Ultimately, the necktie couldn’t slip its connotation as a corporate noose. This became more true during the Covid-19 pandemic. In a telling sign, Mr. Sternberg’s next venture, Entireworld, was built on sweatpants, not ties.
Still, it’s hard to fault anyone for trying to return attention to the tie. It is one of the few men’s garments that serves no purpose beyond expression. And it has been a component of the male wardrobe for centuries. Shouldn’t we think twice before dispensing with it entirely?
“As long as we’re alive, a tie will always look good,” said David Coggins, a writer who lives most of his waking life in a knit tie. Neckties, he contends, are a firewall against an ever-accelerating trend cycle.
“Men had it easy, and now we’re making it harder,” he said. “All you need to do is look at what Fred Astaire wore, and you’ll be fine.”
It was not long ago that ties were a product category brands could rely on. For decades, men bought ties for job interviews; their partners purchased them as gifts. Labels like Dior now appear convinced that with some celebrity endorsements and polarizing styling, ties will become a profit generator for them again.
But in truth, these kinds of look-at-me tie acrobatics may only push men further from the tie rack.
“Any real trend has to be adopted and adapted by the street, by the customer, in an authentic way over time,” Mr. Sternberg said.
After all, as Drake’s sales figures reflect, it’s not as if a polarity of male shoppers have reawakened to the idea that the tie will smarten up their daily wardrobe. To become a tie guy in 2025 is to risk becoming that most treacherous thing in men’s fashion: a brand follower.
“You’re not going to walk out of the house with a tie over a sweater or a tie tied backward with the brand label out,” Mr. Sternberg said. “And if you do that after having seen the Dior show, that’s the lamest thing in the world.”
Jacob Gallagher is a Times reporter covering fashion and style.
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