Donald Trump wears it only in red or blue. The corporate bosses who sat at his table in Davos a few years ago had dutifully put one on too. But during the day, in plenary session, the time of the tie was over, as everyone could see on television.
Yet the cultural history of the necktie goes back to ancient Rome, where legionaries tied the so-called focale around their necks, an elongated piece of cloth to protect against the cold. It became truly popular thanks to the Croatian mercenaries at the court of the Sun King Louis XIV around 1660. The Croats called the white cloth «Hrvatska», which the French reshaped into «cravate».
Since the Belle Époque, when the working world was split into «blue and white collar workers», the necktie has signalled class difference. For generations it was «de rigueur» in «refined» professions and circles.
Slowly and stealthily, this dress code faded away. In 2017 Dieter Zetsche, then CEO of Mercedes-Benz, broke the spell and chaired the annual press conference with an open shirt collar. As long as the numbers were right!
Ever more matter-of-factly, entrepreneurs and freelancers appear «casual» in business life too. The retired are excused anyway. Most relish no longer having to do anything and showing up in a T-shirt, a polo-neck or the «pensioner’s case»: a sleeveless waistcoat with many, many pockets.
A cultural rupture, when you consider that around 1968 of all times, a Zurich chief physician known for being particularly authoritarian sent his junior doctors home if they turned up with an open shirt collar …
A wise pastor once explained to me the deeper meaning of the tie: it serves to remind man to sense the limits of the appetites of the upper and the lower parts of the body.
Today the real dress code seems to read: only those with something to sell still submit to the suit torture. For some, though, the necktie remains a trademark. Erich Gysling often appears on television with an elegant Ascot tie; and the former Tages-Anzeiger publisher Hans-Heinrich Coninx never left the house without his bow tie. And a few days ago I saw the singer and impresario Christian Jott Jenny in the colours of the municipality of which he is president: blue suit, bright-yellow tie.
My personal necktie trauma was the trip with foreign minister Pierre Aubert on a state visit to Africa. The journalists were part of the delegation and were therefore expected to dress like diplomats. But the enormous humidity meant that within a quarter of an hour of landing, my tie was dripping with sweat.
A friend still afflicted by the tie requirement – a banker, naturally – once explained to me the greatest advantage of his neck torture like this: «You can’t imagine how good it feels when you come home in the evening and can take the damned thing off.»
This article appeared in MEN issue 1/24 (May 2024).
