Something Old, Something New, Always Classic

My mother's father was a dapper man. In this case were are defining dapper as "neat, trim; stylishly dressed, neatly dressed; spiffy". A lot of what I think about men's fashion derived from the way he dressed. Now I am neither as neat nor as fastidious about clothing as he was, but I am also of a different era. My grandfather went bald early and one of the reasons I am proud and happy to crop my hair so often was because he had. If he had no reason to "be ashamed" by what was natural, why should I?

That being the case, I always remembered my grandfather's bow ties. Now, over the years, I have been known to wear one, but never as well or as consistently as he did. When my grandfather passed, I wore one of his ties to his funeral, as an homage to him, and the only thing I asked for to remember him by were his bow ties.

I went through the bag of them yesterday and I was amazed by them. With the exception of three, they were all Brooks Brothers (the others being Cohoes Manufacturing back when Cohoes was known for something other than unwed mothers and high STD rates), and they spanned forty years of men's fashion.

Some of these have not aged well, but others are still current and amazingly so. Looking at them, I see the patterns that I wore as recently as last week.

I do realize that I need to lose twenty pounds to wear them regularly, but I love the idea of wearing them, as a statement of my love for my grandfather, as well as a statement about men's fashion.

Would you see a bow tie as an affectation or something novel if you saw me, or anyone else, wearing one?