a.k.a. V.J.

I am not exactly what someone would call a “fashion plate.” For most of my life, I was positively indifferent toward clothes. My daily wardrobe ensembles were usually slovenly and uncoordinated. I was never the kind of guy you’d see on the cover of GQ. (Hell, I would have gotten laughed off the pages of the JCPenney menswear catalog.)

That said, I entered the workforce at a time when men who worked in an office environment were expected (and often explicitly required) to wear neckties. As a result, I accumulated a lot of them over the years. And I mean a lot. For the better part of twenty years, hardly a birthday or Christmas went by without someone gifting me a tie. When I would shop for new dress clothes to replenish my wardrobe, I’d usually pick up a tie or two that I thought went well with the shirts I bought. And of course, ties almost never wear out, so I never had occasion to get rid of them. I’ve never bothered to count, but I estimate that I own well over 100 ties. Since I obtained the majority of these ties in the 1990s, many of them are too gaudy or dated to pull off these days, but I still keep them around.

All those formative years spent wearing ties got me in the mindset of feeling underdressed without one in professional settings, even long after it became fashionable for everyone from C-suite executives on down to abandon formal neckwear. Most days, these past few years, I don’t wear a tie to work, but I still feel like I’m getting away with something when I don’t.

I do, however, almost always wear a tie when I teach. When I was in college, almost all of my professors dressed up, so it just seems natural for me to do so as well. I also subscribe to the idea that when an instructor dresses well, it elevates the material a bit. I have no evidence to back that point up, and maybe it’s just something I grasp onto because I want to believe it, but there it is. I even go so far as to put on a tie — and sometimes a jacket — when I record online lectures from my own house.

One factor that caused me to double down on neckties, and somewhat elevated day-to-day attire in general, was the pandemic. Most people went hyper-casual during the lockdowns and work-from-home era. Athleisure ruled the day. But I zigged when everyone else zagged and started dressing up more. It wasn’t just about being contrarian (make no mistake, though — I am a card-carrying contrarian from way back!). For me, it was a way of coping with the weirdness of it all. The daily routine of getting out of bed and getting dressed like I actually had somewhere to go gave me a much-needed sense of structure and control during that chaotic time. It also made me feel good. Sitting around the house in pajamas would have just made me feel like I was wasting away, going to seed. Feeling put-together every day was a small mental-health exercise for me.

And if I’m being honest, the older I get, the more I enjoy leaning into the aspects of my lifetime that are now considered unfashionable, if not downright archaic. If wearing a necktie when everyone around me is sporting hoodies and T-shirts makes me look like an eccentric old man from a bygone era, I’m good with that. After all, that’s what I truly am, even without the tie.