Tie Talk
A. Gautam
A necktie, or simply a tie, is a long piece of cloth that usually men wear. A tie is worn around the neck and rests under the collar. Usually, men wear it on formal occasions. Some ties are pre-knotted and can simply be clipped on. People didn’t always wear a tie, and the ways the fashion of tie changed is interesting.
During the Thirty Years’ War in France (1618-1648), the French king Louis XIII hired Croatian soldiers who wore a piece of cloth around their neck. It was a part of their uniform. The king loved it and named it “La Cravate” because it was inspired by the Croatians. Then, a looser version of the cravat followed at the end of the 17th century. It was called the French Steinkirk.
Then, the stock tie came along. The stock ties were like two giant rectangles of fabric crossing over each other. By the 1800s, it was established that touching another man’s neckwear would be the reason for a duel, which is a two-people fight with a deadly weapon. Around this time, some of the ties started to look like ties of today. Also, people started to use the word “tie” around this time.
King Edward VII made the ascot popular. An ascot tie is also called a hanker-tie. In the military and at colleges, lots of people started wearing a tie with the four-in-hand knot. The four-in-hand is a way to tie a tie in four steps. Gradually, people developed more knots. In 1827, a best-selling book was published in France to elaborate on 32 knots to try.
In the 1920s, a New York tie maker patented a new way of cutting fabric and sewing it.
The tie could lay flat without getting twisted. Even after each wear, the tie could retain its shape. A decade later, ties were wider but shorter. The Duke of Windsor invented an extra-wide knot, a style used still today. There were decades of super-wide ties with loud patterns. Only in the 1980s did ties become skinnier again.
In the 1990s, ties became more uniform in width, around four inches. There remain three basic knots called the Windsor, the Half Windsor, and the four-in-hand.
The word uniform comes from Latin unus (one)+ forma (shape). What does uniform in the last paragraph most likely mean?
Responses
A Varied or changingVaried or changing
B Different but matchingDifferent but matching
C Identical or consistentIdentical or consistent
D Similar and doubleSimilar and double