"You see this lovely silken thing around my neck? It’s called a necktie.
When I was a lad and a younger man, men wore these to show they did not work with picks and shovels and pitchforks.
Ties were a symbol of white collar status, although even some workmen wore them under their leather aprons.
If you had on a necktie, it showed you had some sense of organization, some sense of dignity about yourself.
Even schoolboys wore them. At fabulous boarding schools like Cardigan Mountain in New Hampshire, where my handsome son went, boys still wear them. It showed, to use a word that you rarely hear, class.
Now, I read in The Wall Street Journal, on the front page, if you please, that men don’t wear neckties any longer unless they are in subservient posts.
This will probably come as a bit of a surprise to Senators McCain and Obama, as well as to President Bush. They generally wear neckties, at least on TV.
It will probably come as a shock to all of the network newscasters and the late night talk show hosts. They’re the coolest guys on the planet, and they wear neckties.
But never mind. The Journal says only 6% of men wear neckties to work, and the necktie is being run down by history.
I hereby quote my late great friend Bill Buckley and say, I am going to stand in front of the train of sartorial history and shout, “STOP!”
The necktie is a sign of a man who is there to work, not to play. It’s what a man who takes his responsibilities seriously wears. Men who want to look and act like small children dress like small children, or surfers, or hoboes, or something.
Plus, the necktie covers over a little part of one’s paunchy stomach. And it just generally makes a man look better, smarter.
My fellow men: stop dressing like children. Start dressing like grownups and acting like grownups. The necktie is a start.
Kids, it’s the perfect time of year to get your dads a necktie. Get with the program, before we become a nation of open-collared slackers.
I mean it. Right now. And then straighten up your room."
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18 comments:
Only Ben Stein would believe that network news anchors were "the coolest guys on the planet."
Where are Ben's waist coast, hat and gloves, frock coat, spats? All once essential.
I agree with Mr. Stein. We need more Man to come forward with such views.
Keep it coming.
Might take him more seriously if he weren't so pompous and his tie weren't such a poor piece of goods, badly knotted to boot.
Thanks, Will, for sharing this with us.
Those who are so ready to criticize Ben should just take a look around and see the slobs to whom this was addressed. I say more power to him and congratulate him on his attempt to decrease the visual pollution that surrounds us.
What can we learn from history? That men’s clothing over the last couple hundred years has continually evolved from more to less formal. I.e., the once casual lounge suit becomes considered appropriate for almost all daytime activities, and is now even appropriate evening wear for most occasions.
But there is another trend. The young tend to need to differentiate themselves as belonging to their peer group by the way they dress. They most commonly do this by deliberately choosing clothing that is antithetical to what their parents’ generation wore. This tends to happen in roughly 20-year increments and fashions follow the trend.
The current generation dresses like slobs, and this trend is aging into the end of the cycle. Most men in their thirties grew up with it, and its been adopted by 40-Somethings wishing to look cool, with-it and younger. I.e., moms and dads. I.e., The Enemy!
There are already rumblings among some adolescents and men in their twenties who look around at slovenly male dress and are dissatisfied. This is reflected on blogs that I suspect many of us enjoy visiting, as I know I appreciate Will’s. If I am correct, we are nearing the end of slovenliness being thought attractive, and with that a desire to explore and enjoy more interesting and complex male attire.
Of course, we all look in the mirror of history and see ourselves. I may be wrong. But hope I’m not.
I remember when we didn't have cell phones in restaurants and people actually conversed at the table and when you went out to dinner to a nice restaurant you wore a jacket and TIE! Let's start looking like the prosperous country that we are! I see far too many people dressing down rather than where they should be. I am as tired of it as Ben Stein.
"Men wore these to show they did not work with picks and shovels and pitchforks" You mean the type of people Mr. Stein looks down on that actually do real work.
Good Lord. I can't stand Ben Stein, for a host of reasons (with which I won't bore other posters here). He's forever talking about his "precious son," a habit that in part provoked me to cancel my TAS subscription in the early '90s. I don't take anything a neocon like Stein writes seriously. Surely there are other people--real gentlemen perhaps--who can be relied upon to provide a defense of neck ties?
Ugh. Dressing well is not about being serious and responsible. It's about looking good. Since when have the best dressers been the people with the most responsibilities? Bankers and lawyers are drab dressers and always have been, by an large, when compared with the aristocratic layabouts who should be our real models.
Many previous posters are missing the point, I think. Arrogant as he may be, and bad as his neckwear may be, his overall tone is quite correct. It's not so much a lament at something long dead (i.e., frock coats), but rather a statement that men should begin to act like men. I have a problem with the fact that often I walk down the street, and a father is wearing the exact same clothing as his 12 year old son, bought from the exact same Gap. It's a sartorial statement of the overall immaturity and laziness of today's average "man". Being properly attired for the tasks of your day (whatever they may be, tied or not) is part of being a responsible man. For most men, I say, that means putting on a damned tie. That, I think, is his point.
I prefer to think of ties as an aesthetic component to a refined wardrobe... some ties say business, sure, but others are a bit more exciting.. and no, I'm not thinking of ties of the tragic sort we might have seen on episodes of 'Friends' or other 90's sitcoms..
Am I terribly mistaken, or does Mr. Stein represent authentic traditional American style rather than attempts at jazzing it up? His photo could very well have been taken in the 1960s, which is just fine with me.
I though one dressed well out of a sense of self-respect, respect for others, and to set oneself apart from the herd.
A person who uses the word "class" is a person who has none. But I agree with his point about neckties.
Here here. Keep America beautiful - dress like a grownup.
The world was a better place when men wore hats.
And no, baseball caps DO NOT count . . .
true, millenials who've grown up tend to not feel that they need to dress up, especially with the reign of business-casual codes and suit or shirt&tie being pigeonholed to only very conservative fields.
But as a personal question, what do you guys think about for people in creative/liberal fields? Designers, artists, advertising people - I can vouch that I've felt ovedressed if I wore a tie and wasn't going to come in sight of a client.
I agree-
I also wish we still dressed like they did in the 40's--
what a look!
Melissa Casey, Houston
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