Cravatomancy

Fish on a Friday

Whatever the origins of the tradition of eating fish on a Friday, in Romish doctrine or in a Tudro attempt to boost the fishing industry, it seems to me worth observing, even in the 21st century.

This is a Liberty and shows salmon swimming across. There is porbably a heraldic term for this. I shall check.

Lightning flashes

Today's tie, by Turnbull and Asser, depicts flashes of lightning. If, as eirefairy observes, in Japan the wearing of striped ties is reserved by unwritten sumptuary laws for the big bosses, then surely a tie like this may only be worn by the Olympians of the workplace.

This is illusion, of course; I am no big beast, but a petty functionary in a small FE college. But clothes are all illusion.

More stripes

As the chorus sings in Messiah, 'and with his stripes we are healed'.

The ties are windows to the soul

I bought this tie at a wine tasting. The wine merchants planned it well: the tasters were sent round rooms in a gallery on Pall Mall, tasting as we went, and then, at the end, when our resistance was low, they sold us stuff. At this tasting I bought a case of something fizzy with a bouquet of lemons, and this emphatically Dionysiac tie. I could have bought a bow too.

With this tie, I am probably telling the world, 'yes, I am a hopeless dipso. In the popular euphemistic phrase, I "like a drink". Hence I wear a tie emblazoned with grapes'. No wonder people look askance.

The meanings of stripes

With these striped ties, the wearer takes a risk. Is he wearing the insignia of the Old Custardians or the Royal Loamshire Yeomanry round his neck? Will an old and enraged club-man accost him and demand to know why he is wearing a tie only awarded to those elected to membership? Will someone remind him of the time they roasted Clegg Minor over a slow fire?

Two day's ties

I'm a little behind, so please allow me to combine Thursday's and Friday's ties into one cosmically significant post.

On Thursday I wore this:

It is another variation on the paisley theme, this time a Lewin tie, tie-makers who I think have become a bit too big for their boots. But this is a favourite of mine.

Friday's tie was knitted; I'm never sure about knitted ties. They were all the rage among the art masters who taught me in the sixties. Whether they work as well on a librarian in a new century is debateable.

Neck and neck

Part of the point of this exercise, wearing and photographing every tie I own, is to be able to make an inventory and a taxonomy of the collection. So it will be interesting to see which makers I prefer. This is another Liberty tie, and I think they and Duchamp are, if you will pardon the expression, neck and neck.

Another Liberty tie

Today I frolicked in the groves of Academe, so I chose a Liberty tie. This one is in a curious heavy material. I'm sure a textile artist could tell me what it is.

It is one of my favourites, though it is not a tie that has ever elicited compliments. Then again, there is the school of thought that says that if one's dress provokes comments, then it is probably over-ostentatious.

Swishing

Every so often I shall leaven the stodge of endless pictures of my Adam's apple and double chin adorned with expensive bits of cloth with some more substantial reflections on things vaguely to do with ties. Among those I have in mind are:

• the political economy of ties, or how Marx's analysis of the tendency of capital to monopoly is born out by the changing street directory entries for Jermyn Street
• some neglected aspects of the history of the tie
• and of course, a late sixties/early seventies essay on Freud, D.H. Lawrence, ties and the phallos, entitled Did Mellors wear a tie? I wasn't a sixth-former in that era for nothing

Today, I want to refer you to the incomparable Paper Flowers, who has been blogging about a clothes-swish. To the extent that I understand a clothes-swish, it is a sartorial bring-and-buy, except no cash changes hands; there does seem to be a lot of drinking, though. One of the participants told me that 'clothes-swishing [is] one of those things that women do and men are scared of.'

I wonder...would men swish? Would a tie swish work? Look at the elegance and joie de vivre of the participants. Could men do that too? Probably not.

Coney catching

This is one of my favourite ties, bought well over ten years ago but still wearable. By Holland and Holland, it shows rabbits at play. Not shown is the huntsman creeping up behind them with his Holland and Holland gun.