The House of Lords has relaxed its rules on ties. When something ceases to be compulsory, might that be the moment it becomes stylish again?
By David Mason.
To tie or not to tie? Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni in Lucky to Be a Woman (1956).
Credit: Everett Collection
The tie has finally lost the House of Lords.
This week, peers approved new guidance on what members should wear in the Chamber. Where once the necktie was understood to be part of the uniform, the requirement is now rather more succinct:
“Members are expected to wear business attire.”
Quite what constitutes business attire in 2026 is another matter entirely.
Formalities observed: Members of the House of Lords await the State Opening of Parliament (November 2023).
Credit: Aaron Chown
Lord Davies of Brixton raised precisely that question. If business attire meant what men actually wore for business, he suggested, then the tie could hardly be considered compulsory. Indeed, he observed that those still wearing ties for business purposes were largely “estate agents and funeral directors.”
“The tie is disappearing,” he concluded.
Reassuring, then, that when it is finally laid to rest, the undertaker will be appropriately attired.
On the broader point, however, Lord Davies is surely right.
Look around almost any office today and the evidence is there. Bankers have loosened their collars. Technology executives rarely had theirs fastened in the first place. Restaurants and private clubs have relaxed their dress codes. Television presenters routinely appear tieless. Politicians have discovered the supposedly approachable qualities of the open-necked shirt.
The open-necked special relationship: David Cameron and Barack Obama at Camp David (2012).
Credit: Abaca Press
And yet perhaps we are asking the wrong question.
What matters is not whether the tie is dying, but what happens to men's style when nobody has to wear one.
WHEN EVERYBODY WORE A TIE
There was a time, within living memory, when a man scarcely had to decide whether to wear a tie.
He simply wore one.
When in doubt, ask Jeeves: Stephen Fry attends to Hugh Laurie's neckwear in Jeeves and Wooster (1990).
Credit: Album
To the office. To lunch. To dinner. To church. To the theatre. To a wedding. To a funeral. To Parliament.
For much of the twentieth century, the suit, shirt and tie formed an almost universally understood uniform for the adult male. London had it. New York had it. Paris had it. Rome had it.
The details changed, of course. Savile Row did not look like Madison Avenue, and Madison Avenue did not look like Milan. A man's choice of cloth, cut, shirt, shoes and neckwear could reveal a great deal about him.
But the framework was understood.
And that framework did something rather useful.
It removed a lot of decisions.
Within the rules: Cary Grant demonstrates that conformity need not preclude style (1955).
Credit: Pictorial Press
The beautifully dressed man could distinguish himself through proportion, texture, colour and taste. The badly dressed man could make a complete hash of precisely the same ingredients. But both understood, broadly speaking, what was expected of them.
The tie wasn't necessarily an expression of style.
Often, it was simply a rule.
WHEN THE RULES CHANGED
There was no single moment when that rule disappeared.
Casual Friday became increasingly casual. Creative industries rejected the corporate uniform. Silicon Valley elevated informality almost to an ideology. Restaurants relaxed. Clubs relaxed. Offices relaxed.
Steve Jobs with the Apple Macintosh launch model (1984) and a later version (1994).
Credit: American Phot Archive / ZUMA Press
Then came the pandemic, when millions of men discovered that business could apparently be conducted perfectly successfully without trousers, let alone a tie.
But the change had begun much earlier.
Back in the mid-1990s, the suit and tie still held sway across much of corporate Britain. Soho House, which opened its doors in 1995, represented a rather different world.
I discovered this rather belatedly when I arrived one evening wearing a tie — and was refused entry until I removed it.
There was something wonderfully symbolic about the encounter. For generations, a gentleman might have been denied admission to a club for not wearing a tie. Here was a new kind of club insisting upon precisely the opposite.
The tie had ceased to be a passport to respectability. In certain circles, it had become evidence that one belonged to the wrong tribe.
House rules: Ray Winstone relaxes at Soho House, London (2002).
Credit: David Sandison
I remain a member of another London club where precisely the opposite applies.
A tie is still compulsory.
Indeed, the matter was put to the membership again only last year. The result was a resounding vote in favour of retaining the requirement.
There is, fortunately, provision at the club for the forgetful.
The hall porter maintains a selection of emergency ties for members and guests who arrive without suitable neckwear. These are not, it must be said, examples one would ordinarily select voluntarily. The resulting horror-tie satisfies the dress code while providing considerable entertainment for everyone else.
Between those two clubs lies much of the story of the modern tie.
One regarded removing it as part of its identity. The other regards wearing it as part of its own.
Neither rule is really about a strip of silk around a man's neck.
It is about understanding the room.
THE NEW UNIFORM
The curious thing about the decline of formal dress is that it was supposed to free us from uniform.
The old rules: Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack in Ocean's 11 (1960).
Credit: Pictorial Press
Instead, we created different uniforms.
Silicon Valley had its jeans, trainers and T-shirts. The creative industries developed their own codes. Finance softened the suit into open-necked shirts and gilets. The fashionable restaurant acquired a clientele apparently united in having made considerable effort to look as though no effort had been made at all.
Casualness itself became a signifier.
For a time, the ability not to wear a tie became a peculiar demonstration of status. The junior executive still had to look like an executive. The billionaire founder could turn up in a T-shirt.
The uniform hadn't disappeared.
It had simply changed.
And perhaps that is what has really happened to menswear over the past few decades. We have not abolished dress codes. We have fragmented them.
The new rules: George Clooney, Brad Pitt and company in Ocean's Eleven (2001).Credit: Everett Collection
The modern man has been liberated from one set of rules only to find himself navigating dozens of others.
THE PROBLEM WITH FREEDOM
None of this is necessarily a bad thing.
Quite the opposite.
The tie has gone, but not the style: Pierce Brosnan uses a silk scarf and pocket square to bring character to his tailoring, London (2025).
Credit: Jordan Pettitt / PA Images
The disappearance of the old rules has given men greater freedom to dress well — but greater opportunity to dress badly.
The modern man can wear almost anything he wants.
And therein lies the problem.
The instructions have been removed.
LONG LIVE THE TIE
And perhaps this is where the tie becomes interesting again.
Something rather wonderful happens to an item of clothing when you are no longer required to wear it.
It becomes a choice.
I was reminded of this recently during a conversation with the Hollywood actor, and clothing aficionado, George Hamilton.
Hamilton arrived in Hollywood at the end of the 1950s, at a moment when, as he tells it, the studios were becoming nervous about the changing image of the leading man.
Marlon Brando and James Dean had arrived in leather jackets, T-shirts and jeans. The glamour of an earlier generation suddenly appeared to be under threat.
The new guard: Marlon Brando in a publicity photo for The Wild One (1953).
Credit: Edward Roth
Hamilton was told that he was among a new group of young actors expected to help restore some of it.
The studio bosses introduced him to Cary Grant and Fred Astaire, who took the young actor under their wing and taught him how to dress. Hamilton was then dispatched around town with glamorous actresses, looking every inch the Hollywood star.
The Golden Age, apparently, wasn't going to surrender without a fight.
The old guard: Fred Astaire, impeccably attired (1935).
Credit: ARCHIVIO GBB
There is something rather reassuring about the story today.
Brando and Dean didn't kill elegance. Nor did Grant and Astaire prevent the arrival of jeans and leather jackets. Both survived. What had once represented competing ideas of how a man should dress simply became choices available to subsequent generations.
Perhaps the tie is approaching a similar moment.
For generations, millions of men knotted a tie every morning because the office demanded it, the restaurant expected it, the club insisted upon it or convention simply dictated it.
Loosened but not yet lost: Sean Connery sets his tie to relaxed mode after taking care of business with Oddjob in Goldfinger (1964).
Credit: Trinity Mirror / Mirrorpix
There was nothing inherently stylish about doing so.
But remove the obligation and something changes.
The tie becomes an accessory again — something to add rather than something one is expected to wear.
It can be knitted, patterned, plain, sober or flamboyant. It can complete a suit or provide the point of contrast. Most importantly, it can be worn simply because a man thinks he looks better with one.
And there is a pleasing irony in that.
The tie, once the ultimate symbol of conformity, has the potential to become an expression of individuality.
Not because it has changed.
Because everything around it has.
It may no longer be considered "business attire", but it can still make a man look like he means business:
Daniel Craig wears an unstructured corduroy suit, button-down chambray shirt and a tie in No Time To Die (2021).
Credit: Landmark Media
Perhaps, then, the House of Lords has not killed the tie after all.
It has merely removed the obligation to wear one.
The compulsory tie may indeed be dead.
The tie itself?
No Time to Die.