I agree that the tie is back. I wear a tie to my lab everyday. Sometimes it gets in the way as I fiddle with the calibration knobs on my oscilloscope, but people take my research findings a lot more seriously these days as a result of it.
Ties are an abomination. They are the apex of everything that is wrong with western civilization; the culmination of fluff utterly drained of whatever utility they once may have had. Ties are the peacock feather of man. OSHA should ban them as an occupational hazard. An MSDS should be required to be provided with each tie sale.
It is a little known fact that the B-Ark contained all the neckties from Golgafrincham in additiion to the hairdressers, telephone sanitizers and others. The Golgafrincham neckties were initially considered as the form of legal tender on prehistoric Earth, however, it was discovered that it was too difficult to tie a proper Full Windsor with a leaf.
"People with ropes around their necks don't always hang."
Infomercials use similar temporal structures, but they are forced to use different endings because the whole thing is framed as something offered by the client. So they use the Client offering vast reduction ending.
User, Expert, Expert, Client Discount!
These methods surely have evolved to dovetail with psychological biases: New information leads to a tonic level of skepticism, which should be assuaged soon by expert assurance before it coagulates into general aversion for the product. Once this has been achieved, you can plug a specific product meeting this newly created cognitive shelf-space for a want.
With trend stories, PR firms usually line up one or more "experts" to talk about the industry generally. In this case we get three: the NPD Group, the creative director of GQ, and a research director at Smith Barney. When you get to the end of the experts, look for the client. And bingo, there it is: The Men's Wearhouse.
i don't think this article is about PR gaming reporters, even though PR sadly does set the agenda with reporters sometimes.
my read of the article is that some hipster NYT reporter's narrow hipster-centric view of the world made it through the NYT editorial filter. why? because the reporter was no doubt influenced by their hipster friends in ny/la who were wearing this crap.
beyond the reporter, the NYT prides itself in its NY bias, whether its fashion or politics or whatever else. they love this local fashion hype, because its local and strengthens the paper's own image as a part of the local scene. that's most likely why some aging NYT editor let this BS through.
all that said, i'm pretty sure we can all agree that the dudes in those NYT pictures looked really, really annoying. punchable, even.
Anything that helps makes hipsters identifiable at a distance is a Good Thing.
My favorite quote:
"ThereaEURXs no question that there has been a dramatic increase among younger guys, who are age 18 to 34, expressing themselves by dressing up", as said by Some Important Fashion Person.
I'm pretty sure I read or hear that exact line every 3 years.
BTW, is 33 still in the ballpark range for the "younger guys" category?
"The use of coloured and patterned neckties indicating the wearer's membership in a club, military regiment, school, et cetera, dates only from late-nineteenth century England. The first definite occurrence was in 1880, when Exeter College, Oxford rowers took the College-colour ribbons from their straw boaters and wore them as neckties (knotted four-in-hand), and then went on to order a proper set of ties in the same colours, thus creating the first example of a college necktie."
Ties are only out until you aren't allowed to wear one.
Cravattes are much older than that. Croatian mercenaries used by Louis (I think XV) used to wear red garments around their necks. The mercenaries had a reputation as being fantastic soldiers, and French men copied the military trend with what they called a 'Cravatte' derived from 'Croat'.
(My girlfriend's in the fashion industry - she works at an Australian lingerie label now but used to work at Aqua Scutum)
What? Startup hackers following the herds and their fashion fads? Next thing you know, they'll expect all of us to go out and get jobs too, just like everyone else.
Yes. Silly people think you're non technical, but they get over it pretty quickly (I spent four years of my life walking into rooms of people twice my age to tell them about Linux, I'm used to having to prove my merit). Managerial folks think you're somehow different to your colleagues, and if you're congruent with it - ie, you let your ideas be known when most of your colleagues would rather have a quiet grumble, and say no when you mean it, they'll respect you more often. I've had a continual stream of project managers recommending me for architecture jobs to my superiors, asking for me for other projects, and a whole bunch of beer couriered to me as a work expense.
It's not how you dress that makes you, but how you are. Dressing well, however, is a good way to show people that - provided you back it up with something real.
ok, people, we have to admit, the average startup guys are bunch of fugly mofos.
We totally lack fashion sense, beauty (gym is just a disctraction), etc... etc...
Unfortunately, we are cursed of working and being in a very male oriented industry, in which the very few females we get to interact, are not good looking at all.
There is nothing insulting. I am saying the truth. Reality is not always pretty. Go to any techie party, and you will see what I am talking about. Too bad that people just neg. for the fun of it.
Let's see. You somehow generalized your personal experience to the entire population of technically able people. This, in addition to being incorrect, is strangely presumptuous. Who can speak for the demographics of an entire industry?
Secondly, you're calling those disagreeing with you untruthful. You're challenging not merely the validity of their view, but their experience. "Face it", you say.
Finally, you call all the girls in the industry 'not very good looking at all'. That includes me, and many of my friends, whom you've never seen. It also includes Jessica Livingston, who, if you deign to recall, is the only person working on YCombinator fulltime.
So, yeah. It's insulting. And worse, untrue. So wise up.
I am not generalising, I am averaging up. There is an implicity on knowing that for every group, there are people that are outside that average, but they are usually the exception, and not the norm.
As in every pool, there are people that wre good looking, and there are less good looking, but the AVERAGE tech person (girl or guy) is not that good looking. Add: lack of going to gym regulary, not dressing good at all (usually we look like just rolled out of bed), we are a fugly bunch. (every tech party I have been too, this has been the norm). I am including myself there. Even I can try to dress better, go to the gym, and look good, I seldom do, as that takes effort and my priorities are somewhere else.
You want good looking? Go work for Gap in SF, or any of the advertisment/fashion companies in NYC, and you will see that there you are implicitly REQUIRED to look good, so even if you are not that good looking, you will make it up with some good fashion sense.
As I said, my statement stays both for guys and girls. Now, add that there are so few females in our industry, (the ratio is something like 1 to 8 ) the average tech/startup guy has much much less contact with the oposite sex.
Hence all the jokes we get "Your website looks good, but when was the last time you had a date?"
And I feel my comment was totally approperiate for this thread, as we are talking about ties and fashion.
