Tuesday, November 24, 2020

To Wear or Not to wear: The Tie

While we are all sitting at home, we can ponder the pros and cons of the tie. We are just wearing it for business video links with a shirt and over the hidden pajamas. And shirt and tie are kept on exactly for as long as the video call lasts. But is a tie really necessary? 


Once upon a time, a racing driver called Lewis Hamilton had been turned away from the Royal Box at Wimbledon for not wearing jacket and tie. It would most probably happen to him again after becoming Sir Lewis Hamilton. Don't we all like the decorum of Wimbledon in contrast with the loud Australian Open, the very French Roland Garros, and the racy US Open? 

A tie in certain circumstances still makes sense to us when we want to express a certain decorum and show our appreciation to the host. Weddings, christenings, and funerals come to mind there first. Some may think that the slice of cloth around a man's neck is an outdated nod to formality. Some find them perfectly normal in everyday life, because they are made to wear them at their place of work. 

This has split the tie wearing world into two distinctive camps. One group is adamant about wearing tie for proper attire, the other forbids wearing them outright.

If you want to gain admittance to these following venues, you better have your tie properly tied around your neck and your shirt tucked in: 

Taking your tea at the Ritz in London at exorbitant prices means you'll need to wear a tie. In return, you are allowed to scoff scones surrounded by minor aristocrats from out of town and bemused Russian and Chinese tourists.

Formal dinners on a P&O Cruise ship make a tie mandatory. A lounge suit and tie is the bare minimum, more is expected. Stylish dinner jackets, tuxedos and black tie all bring a real sense of occasion to a formal evening affair.

The Old School Tie might no longer be your automatic entry into the higher echelons of British society, but with the right one you'll always end up in 10 Downing Street.

The House of Commons Press Gallery is one of the places where you can't get by with just a press pass. 'The dress code for members of the Press Gallery is intended to demonstrate respect for the House. Male members of the Press Gallery are required to wear a jacket and tie in the Reporters Gallery.'

The Marylebone Cricket Club is as Old School as it can get. The MCC in its role as the guardian of British cricket, insists that men visiting the pavilion at Lord's on match days wear a tie or cravat. They reluctantly make exceptions for gentlemen in national dress or service uniform.

On the turn side of the coin, the following venues will not let you pass their threshold while you are wearing a tie:

If you work for Sir Richard Branson and want to avoid an unpleasant surprise. 'I often have a pair of scissors in my top pocket to go cutting people's ties off,' he once wrote. 'I'm sure ties only exist because bosses, after being forced to wear them all their life, are determined to inflict the same fate on the next generation.

Doctors, male nurses, male porters, and any other males on the frontline of a hospital should never wear one for work. Pieces of cloth dangling about and rubbing across sick people's skin are a recipe for infection. As the NHS guidelines say: "Ties are rarely laundered but worn daily. They perform no beneficial function in patient care and have been shown to be colonized by pathogens."

Police officers, security guards, marshals, and stewards should never wear real ties for fear of being choked to death by assailant and so called fans. They all look like they're wearing ties, but they aren't. What you see are clip-ons. An actual tie would be a safety hazard, especially in a confrontation with a criminal and his first cousin the football fan.

Soho House is a chain of trendy private members clubs has an anti-dress code. It's all about showing they are nothing like the fusty old gentlemen's clubs of Mayfair. All that links them together is exclusivity and prices to make your eyes water for first a membership and then a glass of water.

All factory lines involving any type of machinery like presses or rollers where people could be trapped. But the safety guidance usually just refers to 'loose clothing'. It's taken as read that ties are a no-no. Quite frankly, who would want to wear one.
As you see, the two factions can go on battling this out for the rest of the century. What we see, though, when looking at the pros and cons listed above, the common sense people are on the side of not wearing a tie. Which makes sense to me.

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