I admire Ben Mankiewicz, the host of Turner Classic Movies. He is the man we all think we are in our dreams: handsome, urbane, authoritative and oh-so-charming — a member of one of the great families of film, an aristocrat of that realm. I would like to look like Ben; his job is appealing, too.
But wait, Ben has suffered a savage downfall. He isn’t the man he used to be to me. I nearly fell off the couch when I saw Ben, an inspiration to men, introducing a movie without his necktie.
Yes, Ben was open-collared in a suit, looking a little like an unmade bed, which is what most men look like when pursuing the current fashion of no necktie. Shock! Horror! Another bastion of masculinity has fallen. The problem — and I aver this to be an unassailable truth — is men wearing dress shirts without ties look less than their best.
If they have a bit of age on them, a lot less than their best. The dress shirt, which hasn’t been replaced, is designed for a necktie, long or in a bow. Without the tie, men look diminished, incomplete, as though they had to leave the house without time to finish dressing.
Let me state that the necktie is indeed a useless piece of clothing, like other dress items of the past: spats, watch chains and detached collars. The passing of none of these do I regret — but ties? Cry, the lost masculine adornment of yesteryear. The necktie was something a man could glory in.
Tying a long tie and throwing the long end over the short end always gave me the same .
