The necktie, what it used to be, still hangs on

Silk Dress Shirt They were the best of ties. They were theworst of ties. Skinny little beatnik ties and mod doublewide ties. Suave andsophisticated Frank Sinatra ties and greedy Gordon Gekko powerties. Bar Mitzvah boy clip-on ties and Jerry Garcia trippin' ties. And, of course, all those closet doors decked with millions ofgifted ties. But now, with another Father's Day upon us, comes word that thenecktie — that elongated swatch of silk or polyester or rayonwhose donning has long marked a male rite of passage while servingno discernible utility — may be fading into the fashionsunset. The recent decision by the Men's Dress Furnishings Association— the trade group for America's neckwear makers — toshut down has some folks tied up in knots. A calendar crammed withcasual Fridays (and Mondays and Thursdays ...) has exacted itslast, grim toll, some said. In an age where some people show up for job interviews inflip-flops, the imminent death of the tie seems plausible. It's been a good, long time, after all, since America was a nationof necktie-wearers. Look back at pictures from the Great Depression and you'll see menwho put on ties before taking their place on soup lines. The standsat baseball games were once filled with men in ties — even onweekends. In the years after World War II, when employers createdthousands of new office jobs, the sidewalks of downtowns across thecountry were thronged by men whose necks were cloaked in soldierlystripes and solids. But before we deliver the eulogy for the necktie, consider this: Men have been wrapping and winding pieces of cloth around theirnecks for hundreds of years. It's clear that the tie, once the verysymbol of the male establishment, is far from the icon it used tobe. Still, there's small comfort for neckwear makers: At least they'renot selling fedoras. And, given the fickleness of fashion and the fact that someoccasions still demand a tie, it's probably too soon to write itsepitaph. "You almost want to say, 'poor necktie,' so abused andunderappreciated," says Candace Corlett, president of theconsulting firm WSL Strategic Retail. Predictions of the necktie's demise have been circulating foryears. In the mid-1990s, designer Gianni Versace offered his visionof male fashion in a coffee-table book titled "Men Without Ties," asure sign of where things were headed. A bronzed Adonis dashedacross its cover dressed in nothing but a few ties, lashed looselyaround his waist. The burgeoning popularity of casual Fridays turned khakis and opencollar-shirts into suitable wear for workplaces previously bettersuited to suits. The dot-com boom filled thousands of instantoffices with laid-back twentysomethings who saw no point in lashingsomething tight around their necks. But rumors of the tie's death are roughly equivalent to thelongtime predictions that the computer would soon turn societypaperless. There's a lot of truth to the prognostication, butsomehow it hasn't quite turned out that way. Clearly, the tie business is nothing like the old days. In theearly 1970s, when sales peaked, manufacturers sold between 200million and 250 million ties a year in the U.S. Today annual saleshave dropped to about 50 million, according to Lee Terrill,president of the neckwear division of Phillips-Van Heusen Corp.,the nation's largest tie maker. A Gallup poll last year found just 6 percent of men wearingneckties to work each day, down from 10 percent in 2002. More thantwo-thirds of the men surveyed said they never wear a tie to work,up from 59 percent five years earlier. But the necktie still has its defenders and devotees, men whoinvest the kind of affection in their ties that a golf shirt willprobably never know. "A lot of people call me the Tie Guy," says Bob Smith, the outgoingprovost and vice chancellor of academic affairs at the Universityof Arkansas in Fayetteville, Ark. Smith has a collection of more than 400 ties in his closets. Theyare vital accessories in a job requiring him to deliver manyspeeches and presentations — more than 700 in the past eightyears. Every Smith speech is punctuated with a tie themed to thesubject. A tie with a giraffe on it for a speech about the qualities thatmake a good supervisor, one who is able to raise his head above thefracas to see the landscape clearly. Another featuring a paintingby Charles Rennie Mackintosh of a rose inside a teardrop that hesaves for delivering eulogies. "When I walk into a room, they'll look at my necktie, they'llactually pick it up when I walk in, and say 'Oh, what are you goingto talk about today? and I'll say, 'Oh, wait and see.' It actuallycreates a sense of mystery," Smith says. Smith's collection, though, pales compared to the more than 1,000ties owned by Richard Arutunian, a retired Southern Californianeckwear manufacturer. Arutunian rejects this talk that the tie has come undone. A tie issingularly irreplaceable, he says, uniquely capable of sending amessage about its wearer to women and to his fellow men. "To me it tells more about the person than even the shoe does,"says Arutunian, who long served as official tie historian for theneckwear industry association's predecessor. "Is he trying toimpress me? Is he wearing a tie because he has to wear that tie?How is he tying that knot?" Wearing cloth around the neck stretches back a long way. Some tracethe modern tie to the early 1600s when Croatian fighters loopedfabric around their necks before battle, captivating the public'simagination. Hard to believe, but for most of history men were the peacocks ofthe fashion world, and that included draping their necks in allsorts of status symbols, from waterfall cloths to cravats, saysPaula Baxter, who curated an exhibit that closed last year at theNew York Public Library on the rakish history of men's wear. "Even the Puritans. They would wear lace collars," she says. The era of the male dandy ended in the late 19th century, when theuniformity of the tailored suit took over. In the early 1920s,neckwear makers began cutting cloth on the bias — diagonally,at an angle to the weave — and the modern tie was born. Itfound a welcome home on the necks of the expanding ranks ofwhite-collar workers. By the 1960s, 600 companies made ties in the U.S., mostly smaller,regional manufacturers. They banded together in a professionalassociation that lobbied on their behalf. Those days are long past. "The number you have dialed is not in service at this time," arecording greeted callers to the New York offices of the DressFurnishings Association this week. "Please check the area code andnumber and dial your call again." Don't bother. Today there are only about two dozen companies making ties in theU.S., and the business is dominated by huge firms. Many of the tiesAmerican men wear are made overseas. It didn't seem to make anysense to keep running an association built for an industry sofundamentally different from what it used to be, says Terrill, theneckwear business executive and a member of the association'sboard. "We didn't think anybody would notice," he says, of the decision toclose. Instead, the association's closure has been greeted as confirmationthat the tie is done. The suggestion alarms Terrill, who says that sales have steadiedand ties are poised to make a modest comeback. There are still a few islands of tie-wearers. Lawyers and folks infinance and insurance work in offices where suits and tie remainthe badges of professionalism. "When you wear a tie it still says ... you're dressed for theoccasion," says Amy Klaris, a retail strategist at consulting firmKurt Salmon Associates. Today, with the economy softening, men need to market themselvesand a big part of that is the way they dress. That will send thependulum swinging, albeit subtly, back to the suit and tie, Terrillsays. In the past 10 or 15 years, as dress codes loosened, men who'dalways worn ties "were making a statement. I'm not going to wear atie because I don't have to wear a tie," Terrill says. "But now somany people don't wear a tie, that it's a statement to wear one." That sounds like wishful thinking to Corlett, the consultant. Sheagrees that sales of ties have leveled off, but a comeback isunlikely. "I think it's about as untrue as women returning to hosiery. Onceyou free the body of the tie and the hose, yeah, you may go back toit occasionally to make a statement or on dress-up day, but nobodywillingly goes back to wearing a tie five days a week," she says. For those waiting to see if men will once again embrace theconstriction that comes with ties, she suggests looking to examplesin women's fashion. "You know," she says, "corsets never came back."