The new head of the V&A is saddened by how few Londoners wear ties. But for me, they're not really about sartorial flourish
In the list of "thin strips of material that get everyone talking", the tie is right up there. As a conversation starter it's probably matched only by the Turin Shroud and the hangman's noose. Every year the press debates whether the tie is being unfairly maligned, underworn, or tied too often around people's heads while they do an impression of a heavy metal guitarist. This year is no different.
The latest kerfuffle has kicked off in the pages of Country Life magazine, that notorious nest of neckwear knock-about, during an interview with Professor Martin Roth, the new head of the V&A museum. Roth, who is German and arrived in London from Dresden last year, was quite shocked – aghast almost – at the absence of ties in the nation's capital. "The sad thing for me," he said, "is that nobody seems to wear a tie in London any longer – only the security guards."
I'm sure it would be wrong to read from those remarks an implicit degree of snobbery ("security guards"? As if ties were meant for them!) but Roth's consternation does serve as a reminder that the tie is much more than an item that prevents a man from suffering the horrible indignity of exposing their buttons to the outside world.
For Roth, it might be that the tie is a means of articulating elegance. It's a sartorial flourish, a compliment to a man's suit, something that reveals the wearer as someone who considers detail and tone. Admittedly, the means by which he does this – by splashing several hundred quid on something in salmon pink – are curious, but hey that's received cultural traditions for you.
The Daily Telegraph picked up Roth's remarks and ran with them this morning with a whole load of Savile Row-based speculation. The article draws attention to the fact that "hedge fund boys" don't wear ties, that a Newsnight interviewer spoke to the president of Ukraine without wearing one and that David Walliams "couldn't be bothered" to put one on, even though he was wearing a suit! In this case I think the tie means something else altogether. I think it means "gentlemen, doing things properly". It means decorum and a stiff upper lip; it means the empire; it means a good spanking on the bottom with a cane fashioned from a single piece of birchwood. Sorry, I may have got a bit carried away there.
Interestingly, the Telegraph has long been concerned about the tie-wearing habits of David Cameron. Rightly, you might think, as above anybody else he represents our country and if he doesn't wear a tie, anarchy might ensue. Described in today's article as "a man with a fondness for the open-necked shirt", Cameron has been attacked for his tielessness in the paper on various occasions; by his uncle, Sir William Dugdale ("You can't just turn up to things in an open-necked shirt") by Queen of Shops Mary Portas ("We need strong leadership, and this picture of a tieless Tory leader won't instil confidence in anyone") and by journalist James Kirkup who, when writing about Cameron's test of leadership over prison reform, said the PM had to decide: "Is he a tieless Notting Hill social activist with a bleeding heart?"
I'm sure even the most ardent tie traditionalists would consider there to be a time and a place for a man to go without a tie; on the squash court perhaps, or in the shower. But I think it's interesting that while wearing a tie means all things proper and correct, being tieless means you're a leftie. Maybe that's why I never wear one, but the truth is my aversion to the thing – and it's real, it exists, and it shows no signs of diminishing – is because I associate the tie with control.
In my formative years, I never got the chance to see many dapper Savile Row types marching about. The ties I saw on adults were those of people in office jobs. It was school uniform for grown-ups, a symbol not of individuality but of absorption into a crowd. Why couldn't someone go to the office in T-shirts and flip flops, I wondered, if that's what made them happy. If they did their job, who cares? Well, it turns out a lot of people do. I wonder why that is.