Why the Tie Might Come Back – Economy

Ties are still often overrated when it comes to money and power. Because if ties had any influence on the fact that their wearers would one day become rich, then the billionaires from Silicon Valley, from Jeff Bezos to Elon Musk to Mark Zuckerberg, would have to have been notorious tie wearers for many years. But they tend not to be, just like many other people in business, and that’s why it’s all the more astonishing what the Munich men’s outfitter Eckerle formulates on its website as a clear recommendation: “The dress code for your success is: never without a tie!”

It is natural for a clothing store to want to sell ties. But at the same time make a promise of happiness? After all, even an entrepreneur like the screw billionaire Reinhold Würth firmly believes in the connection between a tie and a career. “It’s important for senior executives to wear ties at conferences,” he said recently. He finds executives without a tie “disrespectful”. The issue of respect in particular is not entirely uninteresting, especially since the sale of ties has been declining for years and no one hopes that the already ailing society will also lose respect after the gradual disappearance of the tie.

Because the industry is feeling the change. According to Barbara Pauen, the tie business in Germany has probably declined by around 35 percent in recent years. She is the managing director of the traditional Krefeld tie manufacturer Ascot and great-granddaughter of the company’s founders, so she should know. “The tie is not dead,” she says. “But it has been under heavy pressure since the financial crisis of 2008, but at the latest since 2012.” And Corona, the epidemic that made jogging pants out of fashion-conscious urban flâneurs, made all of this even worse. Bonjour sadness.

So let’s take a short trip back to the years 2007/2008, the months in which the global financial world was dangling from the abyss and with it the tie. The financial crisis was not just a lesson in investment bankers’ often excessive willingness to take risks. Anyone who looked very closely could not miss it: Even those bankers who almost gambled away the international financial system 15 years ago wore – with all due respect! – always very elegant ties.

The investment bank Lehman Brothers, founded in 1850 (by men wearing bow ties and presumably also ties), and its 28,000 employees fell into insolvency with a bang. Banks all over the world had to too big to fail were too big and too important to go bankrupt, be rescued by the state with billions of dollars. When the toxic and high-risk securities, with which tie-wearers made their billions for years, infected one bank balance after the other, only rescue packages and bankruptcy protection helped, but unfortunately no more ties.

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Even in politics, the tie could not guarantee anything. Donald Trump and his red ties, for example, which are always a bit too long. Not even that had protected the US President from calling for a march on the Capitol. The financial crisis, Trump and the battle scenes from the Capitol: The theory that is held by many that people who wear ties are necessarily the more trustworthy people can hardly be held up in general.

At the investment bank Goldman Sachs they understood that at some point. Almost four years ago, the tie wearers of Wall Street adopted their decades-old dress code, according to which people who thread millions of dollars in business must also wear ties, suits and costumes. Now employees should dress “in a way that suits customer expectations,” the institute said. But what do customers actually expect? That you get better interest if the other person wears a tailor-made suit and tie? Or do you prefer sweatpants and flip-flops?

It all started so well, back in the days of that Croatian mercenary regiment. In the 17th century, the French royal court was greatly impressed by the elegant long-tailed neckties of the Croats and imitated the style with plenty of lace and silk, which went by the name a la Croat first taken over by French nobles. In contrast to shoes, trousers and sweaters that protect against the cold, a tie was purely an accessory from the start. L’art pour l’artto stay in the industry parlance of the French court.

And if you think that ties are just a man’s thing, you might want to take another look at photos of the great, old divas Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo. Or get Patti Smith’s wonderful album “Horses” out of the closet again: a young woman in black and white, staged by the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. The jacket slung casually over the shoulder, and – Gloria! – a black tie over the white shirt. Especially in its very early years, punk could still be very elegant.

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Many years after the silk ruffles came the cool skinny ties of the 1950s, made even cooler by setting the knot somewhere at the height of the penultimate shirt button. There were the wide, colorful ties of the 1960s with the charm of ornate napkins, the sometimes psychedelic paisley fantasies of the 1970s and 1980s, the black leather tie at graduation in the 1980s. It wasn’t always arranged in a safe and tasteful way. There were managers, especially in the car industry, who earned millions, but still (or maybe because of that?) liked to wear ties with little toy cars and even little animal motifs in front of them. What also showed again: The level of board salaries can sometimes be inversely proportional to style awareness. Sometimes it might have been better if the tie had been left out. But the time was probably not yet ripe for that.

Anyone who puts on a tie these days wants to say something. Who does not tie, also. If it is but in the past few years statements was to leave the tie in the closet, then that could trigger a new renaissance of the tie. “Young people in particular are not so averse to wearing ties,” says Barbara Pauen of Ascot. “The father might be wearing a polo shirt and sweater today, so the son then wants to set himself apart from his father and buy a tie.” Today, the tie is also “a kind of counter-movement and an expression of lifestyle”. So the tie as a form of protest, who would have thought it. “Ties were gone for so long that they’re back in fashion now,” says Raffaello Napoleone, head of the Florentine fashion fair Pitti Immagine.

Parties are much more important to ties today than offices, says Barbara Pauen. Weddings, balls, big celebrations – people get married “always and anyway”. For a year she has seen that things are gradually improving again. Although it will “pretty certainly never go back to the way it used to be”. But maybe a little. Maybe you just want to get dressed a little better, after all, things are going quite well now. Especially now that many people don’t wear ties any more. “You’ll attract attention again today with a tie,” says Barbara Pauen of Ascot. “And may even be treated more politely.”

It would be worth putting on a tie for that alone.