A spring clean during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic led to writer Stephen Fry's newest book, detailing his obsession with ties.
Stephen Fry is an award-winning comedian, actor, presenter and director. Photo: CLAIRE NEWMAN WILLIAMS
As lockdowns began to take hold around the world in March of last year, the writer and actor found himself in spring-cleaning mode.
"I opened a few drawers and found they were packed with old ties that I hadn't looked at for decades probably," he told Sunday Morning.
"As I picked them up I would give a sort of cry of recognition and it was almost like recognising a friend."
Fry took a photo of one of the ties and posted it online with the hashtag "frysties", resolving to continue presenting one a day.
"I was amazed at the well of memories that each one of them offered me," he said.
Those posts proved the genesis for his new book, Fry's Ties, which delves into the colourful and sometimes surprising history of the neckwear.
One of the ties in his collection, he recalled, had been hurriedly purchased to avoid detection as he spied on American pop art icon Andy Warhol in New York's flagship Versace store.
"As I was going down Madison Avenue I saw Andy Warhol and my heart kind of leapt ... so I did a very naughty thing and followed him."
After tailing Warhol into the store, Fry "peeped at" him and his posse from behind a tie carousel.
"And suddenly someone came up to me and went, 'Yes?' and I panicked and grabbed the first tie I could see and said: 'Ahhh, I'll take this please!' and it was like, $250 or something - which was a lot of money back then - and so whenever I look at that tie, that comes back."
"It was like dipping down into this extraordinary personal and social and cultural and fashion and retail history" - Stephen Fry
Fry can trace his personal obsession with ties back to his childhood, when he and his brother were given collar boxes that had once belonged to deceased male relatives.
"They (the relatives) were of a generation who, when they wore a shirt, the collar was separate - it was a starched separate thing that was attached with a collar stud at the front and another stud at the back ... and inside the middle of the collar box was a little pot where you kept your studs, and I became obsessed."
His favourite books to read at the time were by late 19th and early 20th century authors like P. G. Wodehouse and Fry said he liked the idea of "being like them; dressing like them".
"I liked the idea of looking like my grandfathers' generation."
There were ties in the collar boxes Fry inherited too, meaning he already had a decent collection by the time he was 15.
He bought additional ties for "very small money" from charity shops and used them to complete his "hopelessly pretentious and absurd" teenage look.
"I'd wear a suit and occasionally tried to walk with a cane ... I even thought about a monocle but eventually decided not to," he said.
Ties may no longer be the signifiers of social standing they once were, but Fry maintains the subtle messages they send are still there, especially in England.
"I can still instantly see, of course, an MCC tie - the Marylebone Cricket Club ... it's got a 29-year waiting list to become a member of the MCC, so those of us who are members wear our ties with extreme pride."
He recalled too, James Bond author Ian Fleming, who said: "Bond never trusted anybody who tied their tie in a Windsor Knot or wore suede shoes."
Fry acknowledged however that in some senses ties were "dead", noting that even London's five star hotels had now removed the requirement to wear them for fear of losing patrons.
"[Ties are] dead inasmuch as in 'cool' businesses - Silicon Valley and Hollywood and places like that - no one wears a tie; it would be considered weird," he said.
"I think the rulers of Wall Street, the really powerful ones, don't wear ties, because they can afford not to - they can imitate Steve Jobs and wear turtle necks, or they can just be loose at the collar because they are the boss, whereas the poor 'slave' has a tie and the tie is a symbol of their ... being a serf, almost."
Fry encouraged workers who were still impelled to wear ties to take back some control by exercising their freedom of expression.
"If you wear a tie because you just have to then for goodness' sake make it a stylish one, make it a statement."