My dad wore a tie to my nephew’s baseball game last month. Not a school event. Not church. A Saturday afternoon recreational league game with hot dogs and a scoreboard that may or may not have been operational at any given time. I asked him if there was a special occasion he was dressing for, and he shrugged and said “felt like it.” That’s the entire vignette but it’s replayed in my head more than any of the articles I’ve read about the subject since.
Because listen: I coach high school football. I wear compression t-shirts and referee whistles all week, so trust me when I say I’ve noticed when guys started wearing ties again outside of places they probably should be wearing ties.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying guys should start wearing them to funerals again, or job interviews where you’re already sweating through the handshake. But guys wearing them as an accessory with sweaters on brunch. A graduate assistant on our team wore a thin knit tie with a flannel to a coach’s meeting last week and everyone left his presence without even batting an eye. Two, maybe three years ago he would’ve gotten shamed in our group chat.
Something is happening with ties. But I want to front load how skeptical I’m trying to be about all this because menswear “resurgences” are some of the easiest things to artificially manufacture. If you’re nostalgic for a trend that went out of style, there are enough people out there that also loved it who will pretend it’s immediately back in style because they bought one. Let me just say what I think is happening up front so we can get to what I think isn’t happening.
What I think is happening with ties, and why it’s different than last time
Ties didn’t go away, that’s the number one mistake people will make in arguments about whether or not they’re coming back. They just stopped talking about them. Offices became casual, Silicon Valley made wearing a collared shirt feel like you were putting on a sweater vest to blend in with finance bros, and the tie got caught up in everything going_work appropriate in the culture conversation. That’s an environment shift, not a style shift. What’s happening now feels like something inherently different because of how and where we’re seeing it. We’re seeing it on people who will never, do not ever plan on wearing a tie to work five days a week.
I bought a burgundy grenadine tie about two years ago to wear to a wedding and it didn’t come out of the drawer until last winter. I pulled it out, tucked it under a shawl collar cardigan, buttoned a flannel shirt over it, and left the jacket at home just to see if it looked as stupid as I felt wearing it. It didn’t. My wife walked into our room while I was dressing and her reaction was “since when do you own that.” Our follow up conversation about why I had it in my drawer was a good indication that this isn’t some self fulfilling prophecy I’ve written myself into believing. I wasn’t getting dressed for somewhere, I was getting dressed to go nowhere.
There it is. That’s what’s different this time. We’re not seeing ties come back as some resurgence of people buying into suits making a return, we’re seeing them reacclimate as just another pattern people appreciate as opposed to just another opportunity to roll a silk necktie around and call it neckwear. Knit ties. Wool ties. Grenadine weaves that have actual texture to them. That’s what’s selling, what’s Instagramable, what’s actually staying around. Guys aren’t popping into Northfield Harris downtown saying “Hey I want to start wearing a tie again cause it’s cool, give me something skinny and black.” They’re asking for ties that look like they can hold their own in a trousergram.
I’m still skeptical about half of what I see out there. Part of this feels like dudes emptying out their dad’s closets and finding ties they forgot they had and Instagramming it like some type of artifact. But as fashion adjacent as that sounds, there’s something to the knit tie revival in particular that feels different. Part of it will fall off because it’s Trend Cycle chewing something up and spitting it out for no reason other than everyone else had their box fitted. But not everything. Knit ties specifically fill a void that wasn’t there when we let ties go quiet. They provide a third piece to complete an outfit when a sweater feels like too little but a jacket feels like too much. It’s a real thing!
What I think works with this trend, and what I think is absolutely sweaty
If you’re going to dip your toe into the trend waters and see if you’re feeling it (and beware, guys, I only recommend experimenting with trends you’re at least halfway on board with,) my biggest suggestion is skip silk for now. There’s absolutely nothing you can pair a silk tie with that doesn’t scream “meeting” at anyone who has worked a corporate office job for more than a week. Knit is where it’s at. Wool tie, cotton tie, doesn’t matter. Get something that has texture that you can see. I wore mine through a full work week (t-shirt and sneakers, not jeans and a wedding) one morning under a quarter zip to practice and forgot it was even there until an assistant coach complimented me on my “warm up outfit” between drill reps. Best accessory compliment I’ve received in years, and if I’m being honest we both were still baffled why it looked so good together. It just did.
Color is big too. I thought it wouldn’t matter as long as the tie itself wasn’t silky but richer, deep colors took away from the whole vibe immediately. Save the bright blues, the crisp burgundy, anywhere you think “office” when you see that color. Think more olive, rust, faded plums. Unsaturated colors are doing all the heavy lifting for things that actually feel grounded.
One more, and this may be controversial, but I do not believe you can tie a tie (pun intended) into anything even remotely close to suiting right now and have it look current. Suit + knit tie = suit with no jacket. That’s the outfit, not something new you’re putting together.
Think opposite of that if you want to wear a tie and look like you know what you’re doing. Casual dress shirt, nice pants, throw a knit tie into the mix and you’ve got something.
Is this real? A comeback? Probably a little bit. Is it just a build up to a fall 2022 tug lol nope. At least not the knit tie stuff. Regular ties are still casual murder at this point and we’re never getting back to them being cool unless knitting makes it somehow. But if you ask me, there’s enough guys out there who have had my dad’s same exact thought process about rocking a tie for absolutely no reason that the knit tie has what it takes to stick around.
Connor coaches rugby in Bristol and has never quite stopped training. He writes about kit that copes with a proper session and still looks fine on a Saturday, and he won’t recommend anything he hasn’t sweated in first.
