100 Days, 100 Ties

Well, today’s green tie fits in with the St. Patrick’s Day celebration that’s been going on for a few days now. Green Chicago River, green hair, green garb. Tomorrow’s tie will be even greener, and hopefully they will both make it thru the fete without droplets of Guinness all over it. That would be a terrible waste to spill part of a pint. Terrible shame.

Alfred's dark green cotton boll tie with silver tiebar

This may well be my oldest tie, clocking in at 35-40 years old, and I’m pretty sure today was the first time I ever wore it. It belonged to my Dad, and it was one of the handful that I kept when he went all RIF on me. That’s ‘Retired In Florida.’ I think he has one tie now…maybe two.

I grew up in Memphis, Tennessee (oh, you mean, as opposed to Memphis, Egypt?), and there was a store down there called Alfred’s, so they tell me. Their signature tie, or one of them at least, was the cotton boll tie. So they tell me. Memphis has a history as the epicenter of the cotton industry; its location at the centerpoint of the Mississippi Delta cotton fields made it the optimal location for the Cotton Exchange that brought much wealth to the city. And to honor that heritage, someone decided to make a polyester tie. Well-ironed irony.

Since the tie was a hand-me-down, I’ll tell you about where I got the tiebar. Right before Christmas I went into Secret Treasures Antiques on Dempster (twitter: @ST_Antiques); their stuff was so cool and inexpensive (I’d rather say ‘fairly priced’). I walked out with about 10-12 presents, along with 4 or 5 new tiebars, including this one, for myself.

Well, as I sign off, I want to remind everyone to drink responsibly tonight, because, after all, tomorrow night is actually St. Patty’s,  and you’ll need to save your strength for then…

Thanks for reading…Brooke

This entry was posted on March 16, 2010 at 2:28 pm and is filed under Tie du Jour. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.