Like many from his time, my father always was a man of neck ties. I do not really recall particularly observing him picking and tying ties peeking within the intimacy of his quarters. It was just the way he showed up in the morning and the way he withdrew himself at night. The tie was just always there it seemed to me and to everyone else, I presume. It was part of him. Hundreds of ties, bought, received, some worne down, stripes, dots, logos tied to the event of the day.
I have kept most of them, along with the dozens I have collected for myself over time, each and every single one with a story to tell.
He would have understood the moment I windsored the school tie around my son's neck on the occasion of his personal Forma Professionis Fidel Catholicae, not because of the religious relevance his grandson was about to face but because of the individual statute tied to the tie and the proportional public posture along with it. There is a moment which cannot be explained when a man stands in front of the mirror, even for a couple of seconds, to measure and glance, not too short, nor too long, before he ties the knot and walks into the day.
Times change and so do ties. Or rather the use of them. In the general public eye ties have become a boring or even burdensome symbol of stiffness or perhaps, at present, we are merely emphasising the absence of ties as a proud token of our activeness and need to breath freely, where too large companies and institutions face dress codes as a Gordian Knot, wandering how to deal with individual senses of freedom or expression, whatever that may mean in a workplace.
It was in a store somewhere in Zagreb, not long after the end of the third Balkan Wars, that a proud and independent Croat woman sought to convince me that the neck tie was a Croat invention. My then still Western skepticism, derived from centuries of misunderstood nationalism amongst the Balkan populations, perceived as outdated at a time when most European countries were ceding sovereignty rather than re-conquering it, did not go unnoticed by the store personnel. This was a time when nearly every day, Croat cars would hunk throughout the streets carrying Croat flags.
They gave me the entire story and whereas I admit having fact checked, their narrative was good enough for me to include into my own little individual tie ceremony in the morning to remind myself of where we all come from and are still tied to.
It would have been during the last outright wars that stroke Europe before the age of enlightenment would set foot forever, that the fighting skills of a few but fierce group of Croat militia caught the attention of French military, fighting. amongst the already then large European powerhouses, aligning or revolting, but alway faithful to their own beliefs.
These militia distinguished themselves by wearing a scarf knotted around the neck, close to heart.
No better "man" than the then still ruling Louis XIV to make the neckwear "à la Croate" popular as "cravates" in and around the courts and eventually the streets of Paris and beyond.
I think I will stick to the origin in my little morning ceremony.
