In spite of Paxman, the tie will flap again

So that inquisitorial gladiator of UK television, Jeremy Paxman, has once again come out of his corner swinging. His latest target: the tie, an “utterly useless part of the male wardrobe”, according to his BBC blog. Time to do away with the thing, he wrote, a post that inspired 325 responses as well as a declaration of support from his fellow broadcasting grandee, Jon Snow, who announced he likewise felt the garment had “no future”.

This was particularly startling, given that Mr Snow has made a personal signature out of his choice in neckwear. What could be behind the change in affiliation?

One can only surmise it has something to do with politics. The tie – or rather its abandonment – has become a strategic tool in the arsenal of a new generation of party leaders on both sides of the Atlantic. Perhaps Messrs Paxman and Snow were just prepping themselves for the coming news cycle.

Barack Obama, for example, was tie-less when he announced his US presidential candidacy via the internet and was similarly open-necked when he posed for Men’s Vogue. Nicolas Sarkozy took his post-election victory stroll sans cravate and David Cameron went to the Conservatives’ winter ball without any neckwear. As a piece of image-engineering, it is not exactly subtle; new generations have always signalled their arrival through the rejection of their elders’ uniforms.

Yet, if history tells us anything, it is that when it comes to clothing, the tie is a notable survivor. Present in one form or another in men’s wardrobes since the mid-19th century, the tie has regularly been declared dead and yet always lived to flap another day.

In the 1960s, for example, it fell victim to the counter-culture, only to return resurgent in the bull market of the 1980s; a decade later, it was drowned in a torrent of Silicon Valley microchips – until, that is, Gerry Levin, then chief executive of Time Warner, left his tie behind to merge corporately and creatively with AOL chief Steve Case, and their joint stock price got dumped along with the garment.

As recently as 2005, outgoing UK cabinet secretary Andrew Turnbull said it was time for all civil servants to end their tie to the tie, and yet tie sales are currently worth £162m a year, up from £154m just before Turnbull’s announcement, and a further 7 per cent increase is predicted by 2011.

For while Mr Paxman was correct to point out that ties were generally purely symbolic and do not contain the practical dimension of most other clothing, such as warmth and protection, he was wrong to label them “useless”.

They are, in fact, among the most useful of garments. What else so efficiently telegraphs, even by its absence, difference, personality, power, masculinity, professionalism and change? If they did not exist, fashion would have to invent them – and the odds are a lot more fabric would be involved.

The writer is the FT’s fashion editor