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Brooks Peterson

Brooks Peterson's column is published Mondays. Brooks also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at petersonb@caller.com

Monday, August 23, 1999

Assault on the ties that blind

Corpus Christi Online

The news is in, guys, and, as I feared, it isn't good. Oh, granted, it's not the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It's not President Jerry Springer. And it's not The Artist Formerly Known as Prince reconfiguring himself as a leader of a clog-dancing troupe.
   But it's bad enough.
   Now, this is straight from The Associated Press, and you know that's about as authoritative, news-wise, as it gets. Oh, sure, I know Reuters has its fans (note to self: would you call them Reuters rooters?), but those of us in the racket know AP gives you the straight stuff.
   So how are we - at least those of us who check the "M" in the gender box - to react to the daunting word from New York: Boring neckties are making a comeback.
   Perhaps wisely, AP sent a woman, Rachel Beck, to cover the story, knowing that we guys are apt to get all weepy and distraught when confronted with an issue with implications as far-reaching, and as deeply demoralizing, as this one.
   Nevertheless, I found the chirpy, facetious tone of her story more than a little offensive. It's off to fashion limbo, she writes, with "busy ties." Around this great nation of ours, "sales are brisk for monochrome ties - in conservative blues and blacks as well as hot pink, shimmery red and royal blue."
   I beg her pardon: "Busy" ties? My collection of cravats has been characterized by any number of descriptors - "loud," "gaudy," "emphatic," "painful," and "downright offensive," among many, many others - but never "busy."
   That, however, is not the worst of it. The larger concern is the way American males seem to be rolling over in the face of this assault by the Fashion Fascists. Consider the chilling words of one Jon Schmidt, a worker ant at a Wall Street investment firm. "I no longer go through the morning stress of whether the tie matches or not," he shamelessly declares. "I like the simplicity of the solid-color thing."
   Granted, it wouldn't be fair to make too much of Mr. Schmidt's dereliction; the struggle for survival in New York may have crushed his critical faculties. Nevertheless, this is the sort of thing that should set alarms jangling across the length and breadth of the American cultural landscape.
   I've explored this particular issue before (call this a summer re-run if you must), but the gravity of the issue demands that we address it again before the Fashion Fascists come pouring over the battlements and force us at swordpoint to choke out the last vestiges of our native ebullience and joie de vivre with charcoal-gray neckties.
   Look, here's the thing: We (American males) are fortunate in that we are not enslaved by fashion as are our feminine counterparts, whose hemlines, necklines and so on are dictated by the capricious whims of the Fashion Fascists. The workplace uniform for American males in 1999 is not all that different from what it was in 1949 (save for the disappearance of hats - due chiefly to the example of JFK, who broadcast the message that young, vital, charismatic guys Don't Wear Hats).
   But we pay a price, and the price is a certain pervasive drabness. All too many of us seem to be locked into the uniform J. Edgar Hoover dictated for the FBI of yore: White shirts, gray or brown suits, self-effacing neckties.
   The last several years have brought liberation via the advent of the Really Loud Necktie. Now, granted, there have been some excesses (the Rush Limbaugh ties, for instance), but on the whole the appearance of these outspoken cravats on department store shelves that once offered only serried ranks of subdued solids interrupted by the occasional regimental stripes and/or muted paisleys was downright soul-stirring.
   Now, gentlemen, are we to retreat before the onslaught of the Fashion Fascists, seduced back into blank, faceless conformity by the siren song of simplicity and ease?
   I think not.
   Now, don't get me wrong: I would not impose my taste (or lack thereof) on anyone. But I bitterly resent any effort by wreckers and saboteurs of the Fashion Fascists to throttle our native spontaneity with a monochrome band of silk (or polyester).
   We few, we happy few, we band of brothers . . . are Knot Amused.



Brooks Peterson

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