My Ties and What To Do with Them

Like many men, I have a closet full of ties.  Not as many as I once did.  Several years ago, I conducted a brutal culling, donating about 50 to 60 ties to Goodwill, along with some old suits, pants and other items of clothing that went out of style in the 1980s, and no longer fit.

But for some reason, I held on to a core selection of ties, including one seasonal tie for Christmas parties (center in photo below), a couple of ties in Carolina blue (my alma mater), and some yellow and red “power” ties that supposedly made me look, well, more powerful in business meetings with other suits.  They didn’t, far as I could tell.

My Ties

Nowadays, no one, except perhaps people in the banking field and a few attorneys, wears ties.  Ties are out.  Those that are “in” — the ones worn by Hollywood types and heart throbs — are very narrow (like thin spaghetti) and are typically worn with suit-sort of outfits that look like they’re made out of paper and probably cost several thousand dollars.  For the rest of us mere mortals, we’ve been unleashed from the tie tether; I can’t recall the last business meeting I had where the person I was meeting wore a tie.  Suit or sportcoat, yes.  But open collar shirts with no tie in sight is now de rigueur. Even weddings and, dare I say it, funerals, are no longer tie-required.

This state of affairs, which for some reason hasn’t generated news media headlines, can be traced to around 1988 or 1990, and the advent of a silent but irrestible movement that began in offices across the land.  Men who had worn coats and ties to work since the founding of our nation beseeched management to relax this vestige of long out-dated menswear.  Management listened, at first hesitantly (no ties on Fridays only) but of course once the cat was let out of the bag, there was no turning back.  Tie makers have been crying in their empty plants ever since.

You wouldn’t know that, however, by department store men’s departments.  Ties are on sale all over the place, and they seem to have grown more garish and outlandish (pistachio-hued tie, anyone)? They don’t seem to sell, but instead lie there like long strands of undersea coral, waiting to lure some unsuspecting rube who has managed not to get the memo about no ties anymore.

So, what to do with the ties I have left?  It doesn’t strike me as much of a gesture of empathy to give them to Goodwill. Folks in need of clothing and shelter typically don’t have a power tie on their list of essentials.  Sure, there’s a tax deduction for the donation, but a bag of ties these days is worth what, do you suppose? I’m guessing their value has gone down, like gold and Victorian rocking chairs.

The plan I’ve come up with is to hold onto them in the expectation that someday, I’ll get a call for a business meeting, with the added instruction: “wear a tie.”  Meantime, storing ties is a problem.  They slide off hangars onto the floor of their own volition.  Battery-powered tie racks have never worked in my experience, and besides, you need a truck battery to power enough juice to move the ties along the carousel. And, no surprise, when you turn on the carousel to select that just right for the occasion tie, all the other ties fall off onto the floor.

I’m going to roll them up (I watched a video on this) and store them in one of my suitcases.  That way, I’ll be ready to roll next time I’m headed out on a business trip.  That is, if I am invited to head out on a business trip, which in the days of Skype and Webinars, I probably isn’t going to happen all that much.  I can just as easily sit at home in front of my PC, without a tie.