The reason why I actually bothered looking at this article was its title. I read the whole text with a smirk. Only to realize that it was actually written by DiGi.Com's CEO, Morten Lundal.
Read it here.
To give you an idea without reading it though, it started off with:
"I THINK the day will come when a boy will see a picture from our days and point to the tie and ask his daddy (or mommy), “What is that?” The parent will answer something like this: “It’s a clothing habit that was prevalent for 200 years or so, especially for men in politics and business. "
And developed into:
""Why spend time on the role of the tie?” you might now understandably ask. Well, to me a tie symbolises two things. First, it symbolises an artificial distance we create between individuals and also between people’s home and work-lives. We take on a certain persona when we leave for work. Not only do we dress differently for rather hard-to-understand reasons, but we also talk differently, behave differently, and think differently than we do as “private people.”
A tie suggests formalism and a reliance on hierarchy that I don’t think is good for either the business or for the individual.
It also symbolises a thoughtlessness - a failure to challenge the most basic current assumptions. We simply take on (literally around our necks, in this case) something previously defined as “normal”, never taking the time to re-think its relevance to us (or to our customers, our employees, our societies?) today. "
So what came to my mind when I finished reading this? Maybe he had nothing better to write about. Maybe should he write about more serious things like his business, he'd risk letting out some information better kept private. So he wrote under the header 'Managing Mindset'.
Now, how ridiculous is that? Can you imagine Wall Street bankers without the tie? And why attack the tie alone? Honestly, does wearing heels/loafers or even pants with a belt feels that good? I think not. So why not attack the whole 'formal' uniform altogether?
If it's so artificial, it doesn't start with the tie. Tie was invented to compliment the shirt and trousers. If everything has to be so comfortable and 'thoughtful', why not just wear pajamas to work? Why not wear pajamas to talk a deal?
Precisely because people who invented it in the first place wanted this 'artificial' separation of our private lives from the 'commercial'! Do you think people should really socialize and talk deals the way they talk to our family? Well perhaps the answer is yes, depending on what industry that you are looking at.
If you think DiGi people shouldn't be wearing ties, at least not now but 200 years down the road, that's totally fine. Fashion trends tend to be fads, but the fashion industry itself has just revived ties, so much so people put them on in their 'casual' attire. Why? Fashion is about self-expression. And far from 'artificiality', ties add another dimension of self-expression to our formal attire.
Would our kids really be asking their parents, 200 years from now, what are ties? I think then they'd still be wearing them to school. Because it helps in reminding them of that touch of 'formality' that we will nonetheless sustain, for the better.
