Last week it was the French. This week it’s the English. Law, order and common sense seem to be coming apart at the seams all across Europe. You will not believe the latest outrage. According to a report in The Telegraph, a 13-year-old boy was sent to detention recently at the Colne Community School in Essex. His crime? The teenager had the nerve to come to class wearing an ordinary necktie instead of the regulation clip-on required by the school’s dress code.
Max Richmond seems like a perfectly sensible young chap. He found the school’s clip-on ties uncomfortable and childish. So a neighbor loaned him a regular one that featured the exact same color pattern — maroon with blue and white diagonal stripes — to wear with the rest of his uniform. Richmond is hardly the rebel sort, certainly not one to defy authority by brazenly sporting a blue tie with maroon diagonal stripes. Instead, his argument was that wearing a real necktie felt “proper.” As he told reporters at The Telegraph, “When you are wearing a clip-on tie, it is hard to be taken seriously.”
The school claimed that the detachable neck-wear was mandated “for safety reasons.” Apparently, Essex is a dangerous place for a well-dressed gent.
Try as I might, though, I could only come up with a few scenarios in which wearing a clip-on could mean the difference between life and death. I suppose if a lad got his tie caught in an electric pencil sharpener, there might not be time to undo a Full Windsor knot. Or if a boy were spotted trespassing on a rival campus, he could switch to that school’s tie in a flash, allowing him to blend in within seconds. And let’s not rule out the possibility that someone could be sinking up to his ankles in quicksand and need a classmate to toss his tie to the rescue.
I remember once I was leaving a Chinese restaurant in the rain, and as I tried to open my umbrella, I upset the takeout box, spilling soy sauce all over one of my vintage hand-painted ties. It is almost impossible to get MSG out of silk, but a friend of mine who was a chemist offered to give it a try, claiming that he had access to solvents that had long been banned from the dry-cleaning industry. When he gave me back the tie, the stain was in fact gone, along with a whole square-inch of fabric. I have to admit that perhaps this loss could have been avoided with an easily removable clip-on.
And I know at least one international celebrity whose livelihood depends on them. When I was in London in 2009, I went to see the famous Italian quick-change artist Arturo Brachetti at the Garrick Theatre. This modern-day vaudevillian has mastered the art of changing costumes within seconds, and his two-hour show consisted of more than a hundred such transformations. It was an incredible display of sartorial magic. I don’t pretend to know his methods, but here’s a guy who should get a free pass on clip-ons.
The clip-on tie certainly has its place. As the male counterpart to press-on nails, it has ushered generations of boys into manhood. Countless young men have benefited from using the paper-doll approach to putting on ties until they could psyche themselves up for tying a Half Windsor. Actually, I still have the 15-inch red snap-on tie that I wore when I was six.
But at some point a man has to put away childish things. Max Richmond is right. Dressing like Mr. Potato Head is no way to win respect. If for no other reason, we need the metaphors associated with regular neckties. Can you imagine how long a marriage would last after a couple “clipped the knot?” And what kind of person is “fit to be clipped?”
So let’s tie one on for solidarity with Richmond, a courageous young Englishman making a stand for dignity. We cannot let Richmond walk alone with that albatross clipped on his neck. For all the brave young men who are ready to shed the training wheels of Velcro neckwear, we will support their quest for a man’s tie. We will beat back the forces of kiddie cravats that shackle British youth to perpetual adolescence. We will triumph, for we shall “knot” be moved.
