The necktie: Soon to become no more than a fashion relic

The tried and true Father’s Day gift is quickly becoming a thing of the past.

NEW YORK (AP) — They were the best of ties. They were the worst of ties.

Skinny little beatnik ties and mod double-wide ties. Suave and sophisticated Frank Sinatra ties and greedy Gordon Gekko power ties. Bar mitzvah boy clip-on ties and Jerry Garcia trippin’ ties.

And, of course, all those closet doors decked with millions of gifted ties.

But now, with another Father’s Day upon us, comes word that the necktie — that elongated swatch of silk or polyester or rayon whose donning has long marked a male rite of passage while serving no discernible utility — may be fading into the fashion sunset.

The recent decision by the Men’s Dress Furnishings Association — the trade group for America’s neckwear makers — to shut down has some folks tied up in knots. A calendar crammed with casual Fridays (and Mondays and Thursdays ...) has exacted its last, grim toll, some said.

In an age where some people show up for job interviews in flip-flops, the imminent death of the tie seems plausible.

It’s been a good, long time, after all, since America was a nation of necktie-wearers.

Look back at pictures from the Great Depression and you’ll see men who put on ties before taking their place on soup lines. The stands at baseball games were once filled with men in ties — even on weekends. In the years after World War II, when employers created thousands of new office jobs, the sidewalks of downtowns across the country were thronged by men whose necks were cloaked in soldierly stripes and solids.

But before we deliver the eulogy for the necktie, consider this:

Men have been wrapping and winding pieces of cloth around their necks for hundreds of years. It’s clear that the tie, once the very symbol of the male establishment, is far from the icon it used to be.

Still, there’s small comfort for neckwear makers: At least they’re not selling fedoras.

And, given the fickleness of fashion and the fact that some occasions still demand a tie, it’s probably too soon to write its epitaph.

“You almost want to say, ‘poor necktie,’ so abused and underappreciated,” says Candace Corlett, president of the consulting firm WSL Strategic Retail.

Predictions of the necktie’s demise have been circulating for years. In the mid-1990s, designer Gianni Versace offered his vision of male fashion in a coffee-table book titled “Men Without Ties,” a sure sign of where things were headed. A bronzed Adonis dashed across its cover dressed in nothing but a few ties, lashed loosely around his waist.

A Gallup poll last year found just 6 percent of men wearing neckties to work each day, down from 10 percent in 2002. More than two-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 who invest the kind of affection in their ties that a golf shirt will probably never know.