I have seen women in neckties everywhere. I love this look and all the messages about power and business that it sends. But how do I pull it off without looking gimmicky or as if I’m copying Diane Keaton? — Jayne, Washington, D.C.
There is a certain irony that just as men liberated themselves from the tie, using casual Fridays and pandemic-era working from home to sound its death knell pretty much once and for all, women have, as you correctly point out, embraced the accessory. Much as they continue to embrace the pantsuit while men move further away.
Ayo Edebiri wore a gray Loewe suit and gold feather tie to the Golden Globes in January; Nicole Kidman chose a khaki Saint Laurent suit and rep tie for the Critics Choice Awards in February; and this month Melania Trump wore a caramel Ralph Lauren three-piece suit and tie to meet with legislators at the Capitol.
Just days after that, in Paris, the designer Bella Freud wore a silk tie to attend Haider Ackermann’s debut Tom Ford show, and ties on women showed up on the runway at the Off-White show. I seized the moment to go backstage and ask the Off-White designer Ibrahim Kamara what that was about.
Mr. Kamara said the tie reminded him of his old school uniform and the way girls and boys had to wear ties. Ever since, he said, he believed that a tie “just makes you feel pulled together and ready for action.”
I trace the current craze partly to the Saint Laurent women’s show last September, which featured a plethora of suits and ties inspired by Yves Saint Laurent’s own style in the 1980s. Not to mention the renewed popularity of the tie-adjacent pussy-bow blouse, which got a boost during Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.
Women have been wearing ties with varying degrees of enthusiasm all the way back to the Edwardian era. Still, there is something about the gender politics of the current moment, with the reversion to what seem like midcentury stereotypes, that makes the inversion of old masculine-feminine tropes seem particularly appealing.
As Sarah Mower, Vogue.com’s chief critic and a longtime tie wearer, said when I asked, one benefit of wearing a tie is that “people talk to my chest in a completely different way.” If you want to know how committed she is to the accessory, she even wore a tie to meet the queen.
How to make it look contemporary is another matter.
Mr. Kamara said the answer was to “go monochrome” and wear a tie in a color that matches your shirt. That way you get the finished effect without it screaming “necktie!” and inviting comment.
Caroline Issa, the publisher and fashion director of Tank magazine, said she liked wearing her ties more loosely knotted rather than in the full Windsor. The result has a loucheness that “makes it look a little more relaxed,” she said.
And Ms. Mower said her rule of thumb was to wear the tie with a woman’s blouse in silk or another drapey fabric, not a starched cotton button-up. She gravitates toward vintage silk ties in softer, more classically feminine colors — pinks or lilacs — and patterns, rather than navy or dark green. She sources many of her selections from her father’s old closet.
All of which means her ties are not only spiffy, they are also rich with memories of her dad, with all the emotion that implies, and they are a sustainable choice. That kind of multitasking accessory seems like women’s wear to me.
Your Style Questions, Answered
Every week on Open Thread, Vanessa will answer a reader’s fashion-related question, which you can send to her anytime via email or Twitter. Questions are edited and condensed.
