Thu, May 17, 2007 page13

• Tied up in fashion

  Formal attire is in decline, but the tie is undergoing something of a renaissance, albeit in a thinner form

  • AFP
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  The tie, that onetime symbol of manhood and social supremacy, is in trouble, creased and crumpled by lifestyle change.

  Step into a trendy Paris restaurant or classy dinner party, and is any man in tune with the times turned out in neckwear, aside from the occasional diehard tie aficionado?

  Take 27-year-old Mathieu Duballet, financial consultant and fashion dandy.

  Every morning Duballet picks through his favorite 20 to 30 ties for the perfect match to his suit and shirt. Once found, he deftly flips the long end round the short end three times left and right and through the knot, to produce that "don" of necktie knots — the Windsor —in less than a minute.

  "I love ties and hate anyone buying me one as a present," said the impeccably dressed banker, who likes his ties in extremely thick spun silks to finish up with an impressive knot and firm tie that will look good and stand up all day.

  "And they have to match the clothes," added Duballet, whose father taught him to tie a Windsor when he was 14, a feat he can accomplish without a mirror.

  But after work, Duballet slips his favorite accessory off and almost never wears one partying or for a meal with friends.

  Yet according to Paris couture circles and watchers of emerging trends among the young, the tie may be poised for a comeback.

  "The tie is doing better. It was ill, on the brink of death, it is convalescing," said Franck Nauerz, purchaser of men's accessories nationwide for France's Printemps department stores.

  "It isn't dead but there was a real drop in sales, it was sick," agreed the buyer for men's goods at the rival Galeries Lafayette stores, Helene Pasteur.

  Neckties in their current form surfaced in the mid 19th century, immediately influenced by the elaborately-tied hit cravats and scarves of "Beau" Brummell, the obsessive English dandy who spent six hours a day dressing but died in rags.

  Strips of grunge-style cloth tied around the neck to soak up sweat, protected infantry against the chafing of armor or clothing that was rarely washed, can be traced back to ancient Chinese warriors in 300BC, to Rome, and more recently to the picturesque scarves knotted around the necks of Croatian mercenaries who fought in 17th-century France.

  Historians say French mispronunciation of the word "Croat," or "Hrvat" in the original, produced the sartorial word cravate or cravat.

  Others say the mannish qualities of the tie derive not only from its military origins, like most men's fashion, but from its protection of man's perhaps least attractive iconic attribute, the Adam's apple.

  And why do doctors often wear bow-ties? So their ties won't pick up germs.

  A must for appropriately named white-collar workers through the 20th century as well as for special occasions such as marriages and deaths, the tie's fortunes floundered significantly after the introduction of casual Fridays and dressed-down office wear in the 1990s.

  "Because of the new casual dress work ethic, nowadays men who buy suits and shirts no longer necessarily buy a tie to match," said Pasteur, the buyer at Galeries Lafayette.

  "I don't think the tie will return as routine office wear," opined Nauerz of the Printemps stores. "But it is making a comeback as a fashion accessory."

  In the last three seasons, top fashion gurus such as Hedi Slimane who has just left Dior, dazzled the catwalks with an array of skinny — often loosely-knotted — ties, inspired by rock stars such as Franz Ferdinand or The Hives, a throwback to the Mods of the 1960s and 1970s when even the Beatles did their thing in ties.

  Often plain-colored, the new look ties are 4cm to 6cm wide, against the traditional 8cm.

  "Young people are buying these ties now, and the designers are offering new colors, new fabrics, new collections, they're making ties un-stodgy," said Nauerz, a reference to Dolce and Gabbana, Armani, Dior, Calvin Klein and Paul Smith.

  "You can tell the fashion houses are not going to drop the tie."

  Historian Farid Chenoune, author of a book on men's fashion through the ages, sees renewed designer interest in the tie as part of the struggle between the ethics of suburban rap and hip-hop, and inner-city life.

  "There's currently a reassertion of central city elegance, based on the jacket, shirt and tie," he said in an interview. "There's a kind of struggle going on, which even has a slight political undertone, between suburban fashion and inner-city fashion, even though there are links between the two."

  "The return of the tie via young rock groups is part of inner-city fashion, inner-city youth."

  Chenoun said the comeback of the tie followed the return of the jacket and shirt five or six years ago by the under-35s, breaking with the T-shirts favored by the previous generation.

  Like today's loosely-knotted, unkempt and worn ties, shirts since 2000 are cool if worn unbuttoned, loose, or straying from under a sweater or out of a pair of trousers.

  "It's a statement by a generation, and the tie is part of it," he said.

  But in one of Paris' top luxury goods stores, the vagaries of mass market buying have gone unnoticed.

  At Charvet, the temple of the tie with an eye-boggling 8,000 on sale and a bespoke service of collars, shirts and suits to match, manager Anne-Marie Colban said of the fall in tie sales: "We have heard of it, but have never seen it."
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