Jan 25, 2025 By Brad Hundt 6 min read

One of tales most often repeated about the Beatles’ earliest days is when they were in London in June 1962 being shown the basics of a recording studio by their urbane producer George Martin, he asked them if there was anything they didn’t like.

George Harrison, who was then just 19, is said to have replied in a thick Liverpudlian drawl, “Well, for a start, I don’t like your tie.”

Sixty years ago, ties like the apparently disagreeable one Martin was sporting were standard gear in recording studios and just about any other white-collar work setting. In fact, they were largely the rule and not the exception into at least the 1980s.

Over the last couple of decades, however, the necktie has lost its ubiquity. Workplaces that once mandated ties have shed those requirements, and there’s less of an expectation that they should be worn in situations where they once would have been de rigeur. For example, when former President Barack Obama stopped at the University of Pittsburgh in October to stump for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, he went tieless – and went without a jacket, too – throughout his talk. U.S. Sen. Bob Casey was also without a tie, as was Gov. Josh Shapiro and Lt. Gov. Austin Davis.

Not all that long ago, such informality would have been considered an eye-opening breach of etiquette for public officials. Now, no one bats an eye.

Once an obligatory gift, there were likely many fewer ties under trees this past Christmas than there once were. In fact, Washington County Commissioner Larry Maggi admitted it was the first Christmas in a long time when he did not get a tie, and that he recently decided to count the number of ties he had – 63 – and to donate some of the ones that he no longer wears with much frequency to Washington City Mission.

When he first became a commissioner in 2004, “I wore a tie every time I came into the office,” Maggi explained. He noted that ties were once standard attire in the days when he was with the Pennsylvania State Police and was Washington County’s sheriff.

He admitted, though, “I do enjoy wearing a tie every once in a while.”

Arguably, no other piece of apparel has carried more symbolic weight but served so little practical purpose as the necktie. When it first emerged in the 1600s, it actually did serve a purpose – Croatian mercenaries wore neckerchiefs when they were on the battlefield in the Thirty Years War, since they held their jackets together and were more feasible than stiff collars. When the mercenaries were presented to France’s King Louis XIV, the boy monarch was taken with them. Just a 10 year-old at the end of the Thirty Years’ War, Louis ordered that what came to be called cravats be worn at all royal events. With the endorsement of the French king, ties became fashionable across Europe.

Over the centuries, ties evolved into the long pieces of cloth that stretch down to, roughly, a man’s belt buckle. From about the middle of the 20th century, the width of ties oscillated, as did whether they were flamboyant and colorful or conservative and somber.

Sales of ties in the United States hit a peak in the mid-1990s, when about $1 billion of them were sold. Sales have been steadily declining ever since, and in 2009, there were half as many ties sold as there were a decade-and-a-half before. The reason for the decline? Men’s fashions have been becoming steadily less formal for decades, but the trend was hastened by the tech industry and its titans, who often appeared tieless at high-profile events. Remember Steve Jobs and his black turtlenecks? After all, who has time to wrap a tie around your neck when you’re busy disrupting things?

Another blow to the necktie, this one probably even more severe, was delivered by COVID-19. When the white-collar workforce largely retreated to their homes in 2020, the ties stayed in the closet. Even as workers have returned to offices, the ties have remained locked away.

Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, a fashion historian, told NPR last year, “People have been, of course, predicting the death of the tie for at least a hundred years. But it really picked up after the pandemic. And everybody went back to the office – but the tie did not.”

Ptak’s, a men’s wear store in Uniontown, handles a lot of tuxedo rentals and ties remain a staple, but owner Jarrod Volek has also put items like flannel shirts, vests and jeans in his store “because that’s the way the world is.”

“You look around and it’s flannels and vests,” Volek said. He also noted the trend toward less formal dressing for men also encompasses untucked shirts, for which a whole brand, UNTUCKit, has been built. Volek pointed out, too, that it has become permissible for men to wear polo shirts underneath suit jackets. His customers still stop by to get ties, suits and other pieces of formalwear, but they usually do so with an eye toward an upcoming funeral, a job interview, a wedding or some other special occasion.

“Everything changes,” he said. “A lot of guys don’t even have a suit.”

Pasquale Calabro, the owner of Pasquale Custom Tailor and Clothier for Men and Women in Peters Township, says that “in today’s world, people don’t have a reason to have a necktie around,” except for formal events.

“It’s still a valid piece to have in your wardrobe,” Calabro said. “But it’s not what it used to be.”

Calabro maintains that ties will never entirely go away, though, and many observers agree with him. So, all the men who flee at the sight of a tie rack shouldn’t count on those cravats being tossed completely into the dustbin of history like stovepipe hats or doublets.

Writing for The Atlantic in 2021, Chrisman-Campbell said, “Men’s fashions will always have a place for ‘prudence and sober judgment,’ even if it’s not necessarily the workplace.”