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By D.L. Stewart 3:41 PM Saturday, April 30, 2011

Approximately a dozen neckties hang in my closet, and I don’t know what to do with them.

Most of them are probably out of style, so maybe I should throw them away. You never can tell with ties, though. The ones that are out of style today could be in style next year, although they’ll be out of style again the year after that.

But even if this happened to be the year my ties were in style, it might not matter. Because now it’s not in style to wear them.

I’m not sure about that, either, though, because everybody seems to have a different opinion about the life expectancy of ties.

Of course, their demise has been debated ever since the late ’60s, when the counterculture ridiculed them as symbols of establishment oppression.

The birth of casual Fridays in the ’90s seemed to be another harbinger of death for neckties, but in 2007 The New York Times declared “The Necktie Is In.” A year later, the trade group representing tie-makers disbanded because it had only a few dozen members left.

When the current recession hit, experts forecast a boom in necktie wearing as unemployed men dressed up to go in search of jobs. But men who wore ties to job interviews frequently found they were overdressed and the number of ties sold fell 18 percent in 2009.

Now companies such as IKEA reportedly do not allow employees to wear ties. Some hospitals even discourage doctors from wearing them as a result of a study indicating that neckties were major germ carriers because they seldom were washed.

Younger men raised in the casual Friday era presumably are the least likely to wear ties, but that’s not always true, either. The 30-something — and presumably hip — vice president of a production company founded by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon boasts that he has about 60 ties designed by Band of Outsiders -- the definitely hip company founded by Dayton’s Scott Sternberg — at $135 each.

It used to be that ties were a measure of a man’s importance. But then it became when a man was so important he didn’t need to wear a tie.

Barack Obama frequently makes public appearances without a tie, although he was criticized by a former White House chief of staff for “bringing a lockerroom experience to the Oval Office” with his casual attire. A poll showed that 68 percent disagreed with the criticism and probably wouldn’t care if Obama showed up for work in a bathrobe.

So maybe I shouldn’t worry about whether or not to wear a tie. Because I’ve probably reached a stage of unimportance at which it no longer matters one way or the other.

Contact DL Stewart at dlstew_2000@yahoo.com.

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