Three Roads Blog

I don’t know about other bloggers, but whenever I have an itch to write a post, I throw on a button-down shirt and necktie.

Well, not really, but what if doing so made me a more productive blogger? What if it made me a more productive AND hipper blogger?

According to the NY Times, the necktie is back. But these days, instead of signaling a desire to get ahead, the half-Windsor knot reveals the desire to be seen as a cool and groovy guy. Someone cool and groovy like, say, Justin Timberlake or Frodo Baggins.

“Wearing a tie is a kind of style. It’s a thing you’re doing. It’s seen as ‘creative,’” a 31-year-old film executive told the Times.

It’s an odd reversal, for sure. For so long the necktie was a way to blend into the corporate landscape, not stand out. And when corporations started shedding them in the early 1990s, it seemed like there was no reason for them to survive, apart from being called into action for weddings and funerals.

“[The] combination of casual Friday and the dot-com explosion appeared to condemn the necktie to the style gallows,” the Times writes, cleverly referencing the long-held notion of the necktie as noose.

But it seems that a few influential people (the Times article mentions the band The Strokes and movie director Wes Anderson) walked the necktie back from the brink, much like how Hush Puppies were given the defib paddes and resuscitated (however briefly), a fashion turnaround described in The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell.

How long will the tie’s comeback last? My guess is that since I’m writing about the Times writing about it, it’s probably already over, to return to prominence in another 50 years or so. I can hear the fashionistas now: “Hey, Justin, Last Year called and it wants its tie back.”

Where I single-handedly bring back the bolo

Here in Colorado, the bolo tie hasn’t gone totally extinct. But it’s a non-starter for pretty much anyone under the age of 40. I have plans to change that. From now on, whenever I post to this blog, it will be done sporting a bolo tie.

It may not make me more productive, but you may notice a certain twang and swagger on Three Roads. Giddyup.

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