The Tie is Back
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
It is a little known fact that the B-Ark contained all the neckties from Golgafrincham in additiion to the hairdressers, telephone sanitizers and others. The Golgafrincham neckties were initially considered as the form of legal tender on prehistoric Earth, however, it was discovered that it was too difficult to tie a proper Full Windsor with a leaf.
"People with ropes around their necks don't always hang."
Many tie wearers cut off circulation to their heads to a certain degree. Bad idea.
Also, ties can be designed really well. I have a few that are made from older ties with nice high-contrast silk-screened patterns.
Given how good they can look as an accessory, and how impressed many people are with them, they should be worn more often.
my read of the article is that some hipster NYT reporter's narrow hipster-centric view of the world made it through the NYT editorial filter. why? because the reporter was no doubt influenced by their hipster friends in ny/la who were wearing this crap.
beyond the reporter, the NYT prides itself in its NY bias, whether its fashion or politics or whatever else. they love this local fashion hype, because its local and strengthens the paper's own image as a part of the local scene. that's most likely why some aging NYT editor let this BS through.
all that said, i'm pretty sure we can all agree that the dudes in those NYT pictures looked really, really annoying. punchable, even.
My favorite quote:
"ThereaEURXs no question that there has been a dramatic increase among younger guys, who are age 18 to 34, expressing themselves by dressing up", as said by Some Important Fashion Person.
I'm pretty sure I read or hear that exact line every 3 years.
BTW, is 33 still in the ballpark range for the "younger guys" category?
"The use of coloured and patterned neckties indicating the wearer's membership in a club, military regiment, school, et cetera, dates only from late-nineteenth century England. The first definite occurrence was in 1880, when Exeter College, Oxford rowers took the College-colour ribbons from their straw boaters and wore them as neckties (knotted four-in-hand), and then went on to order a proper set of ties in the same colours, thus creating the first example of a college necktie."
Ties are only out until you aren't allowed to wear one.
Cravattes are much older than that. Croatian mercenaries used by Louis (I think XV) used to wear red garments around their necks. The mercenaries had a reputation as being fantastic soldiers, and French men copied the military trend with what they called a 'Cravatte' derived from 'Croat'.
(My girlfriend's in the fashion industry - she works at an Australian lingerie label now but used to work at Aqua Scutum)
You stand out, will be socially tested by your peers for doing so, and will hopefully withstand these tests, and gain social value.
Your ideas will also be noticed more, simply because you are noticed more.
It's not how you dress that makes you, but how you are. Dressing well, however, is a good way to show people that - provided you back it up with something real.
Moo.
We totally lack fashion sense, beauty (gym is just a disctraction), etc... etc...
Unfortunately, we are cursed of working and being in a very male oriented industry, in which the very few females we get to interact, are not good looking at all.
oh, well.....
Secondly, you're calling those disagreeing with you untruthful. You're challenging not merely the validity of their view, but their experience. "Face it", you say.
Finally, you call all the girls in the industry 'not very good looking at all'. That includes me, and many of my friends, whom you've never seen. It also includes Jessica Livingston, who, if you deign to recall, is the only person working on YCombinator fulltime.
So, yeah. It's insulting. And worse, untrue. So wise up.
I am not generalising, I am averaging up. There is an implicity on knowing that for every group, there are people that are outside that average, but they are usually the exception, and not the norm.
As in every pool, there are people that wre good looking, and there are less good looking, but the AVERAGE tech person (girl or guy) is not that good looking. Add: lack of going to gym regulary, not dressing good at all (usually we look like just rolled out of bed), we are a fugly bunch. (every tech party I have been too, this has been the norm). I am including myself there. Even I can try to dress better, go to the gym, and look good, I seldom do, as that takes effort and my priorities are somewhere else.
You want good looking? Go work for Gap in SF, or any of the advertisment/fashion companies in NYC, and you will see that there you are implicitly REQUIRED to look good, so even if you are not that good looking, you will make it up with some good fashion sense.
As I said, my statement stays both for guys and girls. Now, add that there are so few females in our industry, (the ratio is something like 1 to 8 ) the average tech/startup guy has much much less contact with the oposite sex.
Hence all the jokes we get "Your website looks good, but when was the last time you had a date?"
And I feel my comment was totally approperiate for this thread, as we are talking about ties and fashion.