My neckties once made bold statement

By Tom Gillespie

PRIOR to my retirement in 2014, because the job required the wearing of a smart suit, I was an avid collector of neckties.

Not your ordinary flashy, multi-coloured or plain ties, but ones that made a bold statement and stood out in company.

However, since I reached retirement age, I have only worn a suit or a tie on seven special occasions since - attending the Mayo People of the Year Awards presentation functions from 2014 to 2019 and again in 2023.

I had a recent peep in the wardrobe at the dozens of ties I had accumulated over the years from locations all over the world.

Pictured are a selection of my favourite ties - the Marx Brothers, a pike and skeletons.

The Marx Brothers and the pike I purchased in New York. One came from Tokyo, another, made of cork, from Portugal, one from Riga, Florida, and another with the Eiffel Tower from Paris.

Nearer home I am proud of my Castlebar tie and the green and red one of Mayo which I wore twice at the St. Patrick’s Day parade down 5th Avenue in New York.

According to Wikipedia a necktie, or simply a tie, is a long piece of cloth, worn, usually by men, for decorative purposes around the neck, resting under the shirt collar and knotted at the throat.

Variants include the ascot, bow, bolo, zipper tie, cravat and knit. The modern necktie, ascot and bow tie are descended from the cravat. Neckties are generally unsized, but may be available in a longer size.

In some cultures men and boys wear neckties as part of regular office attire or formal wear.

Some women wear them as well but usually not as often as men.

Neckties can also be worn as part of a uniform - military or school, whereas some choose to wear them as everyday clothing attire.

Neckties are traditionally worn with the top shirt button of the shirt fastened, and the tie knot resting between the collar points.

Now, that was one of the uncomfortable things of wearing a tie. Often, if the shirt was not the correct size, closing the top button left you half strangled.

The necktie that spread from Europe traces back to Croatian mercenaries serving in France during the Thirty Years’ War (1618 to 1648).

These mercenaries from the Croatian Military Frontier, wearing their traditional small, knotted neckerchiefs, aroused the interest of the Parisians.

Because of the difference between the Croatian word for Croats, Hrvati, and the French word, Croates, the garment gained the name cravat (cravat in French).

The boy-king Louis XIV began wearing a lace cravat around 1646, when he was seven, and set the fashion for French nobility.

This new article of clothing started a fashion craze in Europe.

Both men and women wore pieces of fabric around their necks.

From its introduction by the French king, men wore lace cravats, or jabots, that took a large amount of time and effort to arrange.

These cravats were often tied in place by cravat strings, arranged neatly and tied in a bow.

International Necktie Day is celebrated on October 18 in Croatia and in various cities around the world, including in Dublin, Tokyo and Sydney.

In 1715, another kind of neckwear, called ‘stocks', made its appearance. The term originally referred to a leather collar, laced at the back, worn by soldiers to promote holding the head high in a military bearing.

The leather stock also afforded some protection to the major blood vessels of the neck from sabre or bayonet attacks. General Sherman is seen wearing a leather stock in several American Civil War-era photographs.

When wearing a tie you first had to master how to knot it. Once learned it was like cycling a bicycle - you never forget it.

I am not sure what the knot I used is called but it takes four moves. Again looking up Wikipedia there are four main knots used to knot neckties.

In rising order of difficulty, they are: the four-in-hand knot, the Pratt knot (the Shelby knot), the half-Windsor knot and the Windsor knot (also redundantly called the ‘full Windsor’ and the ‘double Windsor’).

The Windsor knot is named after the Duke of Windsor, although he did not invent it.

The Duke did favour a voluminous knot, however, and he achieved this by having neckties specially made of thicker cloths.

As a teenager in the 1960s I worked as a waiter for Paddy Jennings in the Travellers Friend Hotel in Castlebar.

The barmen wore white coats and black bow ties. Later they progressed to wearing ‘clip-on’ ties.

These were a Godsend if the barman was confronted by a rowdy customer as the tie would come off if grabbed by the intoxicated customer - saving the barman from being choked.

If I am not mistaken members of the gardaí too were issued with ‘clip-on’ ties for a similar reason.

With the industrial revolution, more people wanted neckwear that was easy to put on, was comfortable, and would last an entire workday.

Neckties were designed to be long, thin and easy to knot, without accidentally coming undone.

This is the necktie design still worn by millions of men.

By this time, the sometimes complicated array of knots and styles of neckwear gave way to neckties and bow ties, the latter a much smaller, more convenient version of the cravat.

Another type of neckwear, the ascot tie, was considered de rigueur for male guests at formal dinners and male spectators at races.

These ascots had wide flaps that were crossed and pinned together on the chest.