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about Asia Buzz
Asia Buzz: Tie Me Up
The humble neck tie is in crisis, just thank the New Economy
By ERIC ELLIS
May
11, 2000
Web posted at 12:30 p.m. Hong Kong time, 12:30 a.m. EDT
I rue the loss of the tie, a truly noble garment.
I mean, in the Old Economy, ties made it so easy to spot dealmakers. There were the Nerds in holey Levis and even worse T-shirts, and then there were the Suits in, well, suits and ties. It was easy. Ties meant that there was order, there was unity, there was form, there was something reassuring about the world. Tieless geeks set themselves apart, the clear implication being that they were breaking rules. Or setting new ones.
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But now with economies in transition, the tie is in crisis. It's no longer kosher to wear a tie to the office of the New Economy. For men, the simple act of walking into work in a crisp white Oxford adorned by a stiff Windsor is sooooo Old Economy. For evidence, just look at any of the TV business channels. The same Net analysts who were proudly sporting Zegna before the camera last year are now resplendent in Banana Republic, lest they, at the ripe old age of 45, find themselves disconnected from the billionaires a third their age.
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"Neat casual" is even a company policy at investment bluebloods Goldman
Sachs and Salomon Smith Barney these days--bankers in chinos. Indeed,
mention the word tie in Silicon Valley these days and many people
will think you are referring to TIE, The Indus Entrepreneurs technology
networking group whose members hail from the subcontinent (www.tie.org)
Of course, some trends deserve to be consigned to history's dustbin--remember
padded shoulders ?--but the tie is not a trend. Indeed, if the tie
were a nation, it's likely Beijing would claim it as sovereign territory--its
been around that long. The concept of ties date back to the Roman
Empire, but really got their start in the 1600s to celebrate an Austro-Hungarian
victory over the Turks. Apparently a regiment from the Croatian region
visited Paris, whereupon they were presented to the trendsetting Louis
XIV. The Croat officers wore fancy kerchiefs around their necks as
a statement of their authority. This caught Louis Catorze's eye and
thus, the "cravat" was born, the word being a corruption of the term
for Croat. (For a fuller explanation, go to www.thetie.com)
The tie has been going strong since--if you discount a brief lapse
in the 1960s--a fashion statement par excellence. But today, like
newspapers, banks and Old Economy stock portfolios, it too is under
threat from the Internet, which of course, is changing everything.
The tie is in decline.
In Asia, we are still thankfully unsure about the Death of the Tie,
as a scan around the room of any IandI networking group will show.
In a hierachy-obsessed region, the tie is still very much in vogue
as dealmakers pursue a dearth of young techies. But is it just because
Asia is 2-3 years behind the developed world in Internet take-up time?
Maybe, and there are worrying signs that suggest the tie is under
pressure even here as well. I mean, when's the last time you saw Richard
Li in a suit? And in Singapore, the aging Alex Au of OCBC launched
its new e-bank recently in casual garb and, quelle horreur, a buzz
cut. These days, any dribbling old crony who wants to reinvent himself
as a dotcom guy is showing up at meetings in golf shirts, for goodness
sakes.
Everyone likes to quote the Time-Warner deal as the millennial benchmark
Internet deal. But a closer look possibly reveals a deep truth. Steve
Case, the man driving the deal and the guy who perfected the Casual
Geek Tycoon look of polo shirts and chinos, was strutting his stuff
with Time-Warner's Gerry Levin. It was New Economy Case who was up
to his neck in suit and tie! And Old Economy Levin who was tieless!
As Louis XIV might've said, "plus ca change, plus ca la meme chose"
(the more things change, the more things stay the same)
Ticked off at Asia Buzz? Turned on? Talk back to TIME
Write to TIME at mail@web.timeasia.com
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