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The icon of male elegance deserves further study. 

Regardless of personal tastes, ties have a history behind which a thousand curiosities are hidden. 

We are here to tell you, in short, for the joy of men and women (they also use them). 

It is not just an accessory, it is a weapon of seduction, success, originality. 

Ties are a style icon, they tell our personality. 

Every year on October 18th, Cravatta Day is celebrated. 

The date was not chosen at random: it is linked to a significant historical fact. 

It has been celebrated since 2008 and is an anniversary that coincides with the day (of the year 2003) in which the Cravatica Academy wrapped around the Roman arena in Pula (Croatia) a giant red tie (808 meters long and 25 meters wide) for pay homage to the symbol of national identity. 

The record for the world’s largest tie has not yet been broken. 

In the past, the tie was considered an accessory to wear in special moments that obliged formality and elegance. 

Today, although it continues to be considered a ‘classic’, it is also worn in leisure time, in everyday life. 

The use of the informal tie is also spreading among the very young. 

When was the tie born? What are the most … curious curiosities? Find it out. 

The history of ties 

The need to wrap the fabric around the neck dates back to the times of the ancient Egyptians, who used to tie a flap of fabric around the neck of the dead (with the Isis knot) as a sign of protection. 

The ancestor of the tie was a strip of cloth worn by Roman legionaries to protect the respiratory tract during marches, often struggling with continuous clouds of dust raised from the dirt roads. 

The first real ties date back to the Thirty Years War (1618-1648).  

At that time, Croatian mercenaries in the service of the French army, wearing their small knotted scarves, attracted the interest of the Parisians. The French term ‘cravate‘ originates precisely from the ‘croates‘, the Croats. 

Louis XIV began to wear a lace tie in 1646, at the age of 7, and launched the new fashion of the French nobility which then spread throughout Europe. 

The Sun King particularly contributed to spreading ties in Europe. In 1661 he established the figure of the ‘king’s tie maker’ who helped the sovereign to find ways and materials to embellish and tie the tie. 

The first woman to wear a tie was the Duchess of La Vallière in the 16th century: to imitate the sovereign Louis XIV, she artfully tied a precious cloth ribbon around her neck. 

After conquering France, the fashion of ties reached England and, in 1880, stole the hearts of the students of Exeter College in Oxford. This was the first club tie. 

Ties: curiosities that maybe you don’t know … 

In the late 1990s, Thomas Fink and Yong Mao (researchers from the Cavendish Laboratory of the University of Cambridge) demonstrated that there are 85 possible knots for a conventional tie. 

The Swedish mathematician Mikael Vejdemo-Johansson, however, has identified 177.147 possible knots to do with the tie. 

 

The Suashish tie is the most expensive in the world: it was created by Studio Satya Paul Design in tandem with the Suashish Diamond Group. It is made of the highest quality pure silk and embellished with 150 grams of gold and 271 diamonds. It is close to 200,000 euros. 

The ties have been ‘courted’ by art and used to make masterpieces, including “Woman with a tie” by Modigliani and “Le Fils de l’homme“ by Magritte.  

At the 2017 Venice Biennale, the Israeli-born artist Michal Cole upholstered an entire room with 45 tons of ties in his work against male chauvinism. 

The cinema made this accessory famous thanks to characters such as the Blues Brothers, Stanlio and Olio, Christian Gray, Harry Potter. The cartoons have made the tie an inevitable object with characters such as Armando della Pimpa, Fred Flinstone, the Yogi Bear, Lupine. 

The use of the tie and similar accessories is very dangerous when using some machinery such as shredding documents in offices.  

It can easily get caught in rotating structures by dragging the operator’s torso and face against the machine.  

That’s why, in some environments, it can be expressly forbidden to wear ties during the performance of certain tasks.