Why the Necktie Is Making a Comeback in the Office
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Here's your Money Briefing for Monday, December 9th. I'm J.R. Whelan for The Wall Street Journal. The return to the office ushered in a business casual movement where jeans and hoodies were in and suits and neckties were out. Fast forward, and those ties that have been sitting in the closet are making a return.
The folks who had to wear a tie for years or even decades, they're clinging to this freedom to go tie free. It's the 20-somethings and even some women who are embracing the necktie.
We'll talk to Wall Street Journal columnist Callum Borshers after the break.
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Neckties gave way to open shirts and, in some cases, hoodies in the office. Now they're making a comeback. Wall Street Journal on-the-clock columnist Callum Borchers joins me. Callum, the tie is back.
Where did it go? Well, mine all went to the back of the closet. That's where they ended up for a lot of folks. You know, you're working from home. It was enough to coax people back to an office and then ask them to put on the tie again. You know, we see this in the data. I mean, if you look at 2019, for example, the U.S. imported $144 million worth of neckties from places like China and France and Italy, which are the big exporters, the big makers of neckties.
Why did neckties disappear from offices during the pandemic and before?
That plummeted to $61 million in 2020 at the height of the pandemic. So you can see this precipitous drop. And it's been slowly inching back up, $106 million in 2022, still not at pre-pandemic levels. This is not entirely a pandemic story either, because a lot of Wall Street firms and other companies had already gotten more business casual even before COVID.
This more dressed down look at work is like an extension of what we used to call casual Fridays. What made that acceptable when people returned to the office from lockdowns?
Blame the tech sector as usual. In all seriousness, when you talk to these people in finance, the typically more buttoned up industries, what they'll tell you consistently is that this was about competing for talent. Increasingly, big banks and consulting firms were competing for recruits who were going into tech, which has always had a much more casual dress code. One of the concessions that Wall Street firms and consulting firms, even before the pandemic, were making is to say, all right, you don't have to wear a suit and tie every day.
So the tie is back. Who's wearing them?
It's not necessarily the folks you would think of. So the folks who had to wear a tie for years or even decades, they're clinging to this freedom to go tie free. It's the 20-somethings and even some women who are embracing the necktie. Why are the 20-somethings wearing neckties? They've told me a couple of things. One is that it's almost like a rite of passage into adulthood, into the professional world. And I can remember feeling that way. I mean, I used to put on a suit and tie every day when I worked in a different newsroom in Washington and I was in my 20s and I felt like a real grown up. And now that I'm a little bit older, I sort of relish having the freedom to not wear the tie.
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