.bodytext {float: left; } .floatimg-left-hort { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right: 10px; width:300px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-caption-hort { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:300px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-vert { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right:15px; width:200px;} .floatimg-left-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; font-size: 10px; width:200px;} .floatimg-right-hort { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px;} .floatimg-right-caption-hort { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimg-right-vert { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px;} .floatimg-right-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; font-size: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; border-top-style: double; border-top-color: black; border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-color: black;} .floatimgright-sidebar p { line-height: 115%; text-indent: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar h4 { font-variant:small-caps; } .pullquote { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 150px; background: url(http://www.dmbusinessdaily.com/DAILY/editorial/extras/closequote.gif) no-repeat bottom right !important ; line-height: 150%; font-size: 125%; border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} .floatvidleft { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatvidright { float:right; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} “What’s with the bow tie?” I have to assume it’s a reasonable question, because I’m asked it so often. Students, especially, are curious. I’d like to shrug it off and say, “because I’ve always worn one.” As an educator, however, I bear more responsibility than that.

So for answers I turned to Des Moines Register business editor and longtime bow tie sporter David Elbert. He reminded me what our fellow bow tie fan, Mike Gartner, once pointed out. “If you spill your soup,” Gartner said, “it’s cheaper to launder your entire shirt than a long tie.” We both agreed, however, that Mike has always had a unique perspective on such injustices and that our preference for bow ties was not for budgetary reasons.

There were reasons of fashion, of course, as well as comfort. (They’re just more manageable than ties that swing in the breeze.) We also agreed that we liked the independent persona a bow tie projects. As Dave says, “The wearing of bow ties communicates a certain conservative defiance of tradition.” Or, more simply stated: We like our independence from the long-tie club.

One of my students at Drake University recently cornered me, saying that he thought bow ties were really cool, and he wondered why more people didn’t wear them. His comments suggested that he would consider wearing one if more people did, and that he admired my choice as bucking tradition somehow.

So should that make me feel self-conscious or superior? I can’t ride in on a skateboard, and I’m too old for tattoos, but I admit I do like how bow ties make a statement about who I am. And I’m no rebel.

The Des Moines business community has seen many bow tie wearers over the years: former attorney David Belin; former businessmen John Ruan and Arnold Levine; former newspaperman Jim Flansburg; contractor Bruz Linn; former Equitable of Iowa general counsel Luther Hill and his son Mark; dentist Bill Brown; former banker Locke Macomber; insurance executive Graham Cook; Dahl’s checker Mark Johnson; and the Register’s former “bow tie twins” Michael Gartner and Gary Gerlach, just to name a few.

Sure, the long ties have always had the majority. Skinny or fat, clipped or unclipped, a few centimeters longer or shorter, they’re the uniform. Meanwhile the bow tie is relatively the same today as it was 100 years ago. So is it really bucking tradition to be more traditional than the rest?

At the time I bought my first bow tie, it didn’t stand out as much. Such ties were an occasional feature in a man’s wardrobe. Nowadays it seems men wear one kind of tie exclusively. I wonder if that isn’t for the practical reason of knowing how to tie it. Or maybe as my friend (and fashionista in her own right) Loulou Kane observes: “The long tie is like the suit itself, something that has to be put on. The bow tie men I know seem to care more about their appearance than that.”

Dave Elbert cares about being a newspaperman. So did Michael, Gary and Jim. Once upon a time in journalism, bow ties were favored, probably because they wouldn’t get caught in the presses or interfere with the typing of stories.

Bruz Linn cares about being a contractor, which is important in a business that suffers as many punch lines as attorneys. And John Ruan is probably at the top of the heap in terms of someone we all respect for his abilities as a fiercely independent entrepreneur. Elbert reminded me how Ruan was so determined to wear bow ties in the early to mid-1970s (when no stylish ones could be found) that his assistant, Jan Gillum – an amateur seamstress at the time – worked after hours sewing new ones for him.

Clearly options in neckwear can be a matter of corporate relations. And why not? Image is an important part of communicating reputation. For Ruan, it was that he was a fiercely independent and successful businessman. For my former newspaper colleagues, it helped project an image of independence from the established order, something respected by all journalists.

So if that same student came to me today and asked if I would teach him how to tie a bow tie for his first big interview … would I oblige? Depends how much of himself he’s willing to bring to the job, would be my advice.

And, for the record, I never wear white shirts. How about that?

Charles C. Edwards Jr. is dean of Drake University’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the College of Business and Public Administration and a former publisher of The Des Moines Register.