Ties are nice to look at. They are colourful, have a particular shape and are covered in a wide variety of designs. In windy weather, they sometimes swirl through the air in front of you as you walk before slapping you in the face. (This is uncomfortable for you, but at least it provides some entertainment for onlookers.) They are, without a doubt, the strangest element in the men's suit. What do they do? You can use the pockets to put pens, wear your coat in cold weather, and a sturdy pair of work shoes will protect your feet from both the cold and trash on the ground. But ties? As for the clothes, they are redundant. Their sole purpose appears to be to identify the wearer as male; in this sense they are vaguely phallic. There is little hope for the tie. It is a dying creature. People today are tirelessly informal: they never use a polite word when a swear word will do: and no one would wear a tie if they didn't have to. The tie has started to die out. Over the past 50 years, the tie has gone through many turbulent changes. The company employee is actually a more recent invention and the uniform chosen for the employee was precisely that, white shirt and the aforementioned tie. In the 1950s, most men who worked “real jobs” wore ties, even at home for dinner and on weekends. Then Sergeant Pepper's generation challenged everything, including the tie. And throughout the '80s and '90s, the tie encountered both a strong following and an equally strong anti-sentiment, symbolizing a great debate about conformity, expectations and self-expression. Generation X brought up the innovative idea that what you think is important, not how you do it. I watch. Since this view was often followed by a stock price boom, it was seen as a plausible alternative thesis. Baby boomers “felt obligated to express themselves through work and be winners in that arena,” says Molly Selvin (2006). Looking back at images of the Great Depression, people could see men wearing ties before taking their seats in soup lines. Once upon a time, the stands at baseball games were filled with men in ties, even on weekends. In the years following World War II, as employers created thousands of new office jobs, downtown sidewalks across the country were crowded with men whose necks were cloaked in stripes and military uniforms (Geller, 2008).