WSJ Your Money Briefing - Why the Necktie Is Making a Comeback in the Office

Episode Date: December 9, 2024

Some young workers and women are ditching business casual and ushering in an office necktie renaissance. Wall Street Journal “On the Clock” columnist Callum Borchers joins host J.R. Whalen to discuss how a new generation is tweaking the power tie by making it rebellious or feminine. Sign up for the WSJ's free Markets A.M. newsletter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Exchanges. The Goldman Sachs podcast featuring exchanges on the forces driving the markets and the economy. Exchanges between the leading minds at Goldman Sachs. New episodes every week. Listen now. Here's your money briefing for Monday, December 9th. I'm JR Whalen for The Wall Street Journal. The return to the office ushered in a business casual movement. I'm JR Whalen 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 Borschers, after the break. Amazon Q Business is the new generative AI assistant from AWS because many tasks can make business slow, as if wading through mud.

Luckily there's a faster, easier, less messy choice. Amazon Q can securely understand your business data and use that knowledge to streamline tasks. Now you can summarize quarterly results or do complex analysis in no time. Q got this. Learn what Amazon Q Business can do for you at aws.com slash learn more. 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 Borschers 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 were working from home. It was enough to coax people back to an office and then ask them to put on the tie again. We see this in the data. If you look at 2019, for example, the US imported $144 million worth of neckties from places like China and France and Italy, which are the big exporters, the big makers of neckties. 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? I blame the tech sector as usual, in all seriousness. I mean, 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 and 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. And 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 twenties and I felt like a real grownup. And now that I'm a little bit older,

I sort of relish having the freedom to not wear the tie. Some of these younger male workers, they feel like they sort of are missing that. So they're just opting into the tie. And the other thing of course that I say is, look, I already look young enough. I got this baby face. If I put on the tie, I can look maybe a little bit more mature, project some gravitas. And for the

women, it was interesting to talk to them. A couple I spoke to said, I started by borrowing my husband's ties. He wasn't wearing them. I started borrowing his out of the closet to see how it would play at work. And if you said, I can't prove it's the neck tie, but I feel like it helps me command the room. Are other age groups joining in and dusting off their ties? JS Sure. It's not exclusively Gen Z men. There are certainly folks who are boomers and Gen Xers and on down who say, look, I've got this collection of ties and I sort of miss wearing them. One of the things about getting back into an office is feeling like the way you dress can change your mindset, makes you feel like you're going to do something important, something professional today.

It doesn't have to be a tie, but for some people that is one way that they signal to themselves that they're, you know, getting up and getting ready to have a big day. All right. So full disclosure, I like dressing up for work and I've noticed other male coworkers have not worn ties as often as before the pandemic, but I've got dozens of them hanging in my closet. Does the trend show that they actually have a future? They might, and there's a couple of options for you, JR. You could dust them off and start wearing them again.

And I was speaking with a man named David Murray, who has a menswear store in New York. And so he's a much better fashion authority than I. And he predicts that the necktie will be making a comeback for wider and wider age groups in the coming years. And the other thing though, is that some of these younger tie wearers, sure in some cases they're going out and buying new ties, but they've got a real hankering for vintage ties. These secondhand stores, I spoke with a young man who's a congressional intern,

he's 21 years old. He's got hand-me-down neckties from his great-grandfather from the 1940s, 50s and 60s and he loves them. If you've got some oldies, there may be a market that could flip them on eBay or the Facebook marketplace. But there are work occasions where a tie is considered almost a requirement in terms of dress code, right? Yes, there are certainly still some more conservative firms on Wall Street, for example,

that would still expect you to wear a suit and tie every day. In other cases, the dress code will say something like, if you're just working internally with your team, you don't have to wear the suit and tie. But if you're meeting with clients, we expect you to do that. Attorneys I spoke to said they certainly still put on a suit and tie when they go to court, for example. So there are absolutely still professional forums where the tie is expected. Now for some people, this is new territory going out and buying a necktie. How should they approach that? You ought to have at least one. And if you're only going to have one, probably something neutral and versatile

that you could wear with a lot of outfits. I hadn't a good conversation with someone who works at a menswear store in state college, Pennsylvania. So they have a lot of students from Penn state university and they have like a job interview package, basically, and it's the suit and the tie and the shirt all together. And so their recommendations, look, you got to have at least one in your arsenal. For other folks, if you're looking to branch out, that can be the chance to go thrifting and you can find some on the cheap.

The novelty can be sort of the discovery, right? The hunt for this thing from the past. There are also very high end ties, especially some of the new lines coming out for women. I spoke with a woman who is a real estate agent in New York, and she says she puts on a tie once or twice a week as a conversation starter. She said, you know, one of her favorites is this crystal studded tie from a fashion company called Nandani,

and she dropped $250 on this tie. It can really run the gamut. You can get a tie for 10 bucks at a thrift store, or you can spend several hundred dollars. That's WSJ columnist Callum Warshers. And that's it for your Money Briefing. This episode was produced by Ariana Asparu with supervising producer Melanie Roy. I'm JR Whalen for The Wall Street Journal. Thanks for listening.