The fabulous silliness of everyday things

Some things are so much part of the everyday, so normal, that their absurdity goes almost unnoticed. The prompt for this observation? Ties. Their continued existence baffles me. It’s not that I dislike them. (Don’t sweat the small stuff.) I just don’t get them.

For the city gent in the obligatory suit, there’s precious little scope for fashionable self-expression, but the average tie doesn’t do that anyway. It just hangs there, its only apparent function to cover the shirt buttons, which are hardly offensive. Not on women’s blouses, so surely not on men’s shirts. And I know that men don’t particularly like them. Why haven’t men revolted, I wonder?

I wore a tie at school, and it wasn’t actually uncomfortable, though I’ve heard men complain that they are. Perhaps it’s symbolic pain, the discomfort of being forced into the uniform of a white-collar labourer. Putting on a tie, be it for school, work or god forbid, court, is the polar opposite of pulling on a t-shirt.

Those American ties are cool, the ones with bootlaces and beautiful Navajo-style silver and turquoise clasps (if clasps they are). I believe they pass as formal attire. They’re jewellery for today’s man and interesting for onlookers. I see a real gap in the market for new kinds of tie. Ties with style, that feel good, stimulate conversation, maybe even do something really useful. I just can’t think of what.

Scratch that. It would be better if ties died out, because without beauty or defensible function they are ultimately just inordinately silly things. But I suppose there is a place for silly.