Like a Virgin

A NOOSE AROUND THE NECK

While out walking in London recently, I passed a group of uniformed schoolchildren moving in an orderly, single-file line, with teachers in front and rear.

Nothing unusual, except for one thing that made me laugh out loud: their identical school ties. Or more accurately, what was left of them. More than half of the kids had cut their ties so that only three or four inches remained below the knot.

Intrigued, I asked the teacher who was bringing up the rear, ‘So what happened to the ties?’

He chuckled and said, ‘Well, the kids hate wearing them, but school rules say they have to. What the rules fail to specify, however, is how long they have to be-so, snip-snip!’

Why didn’t I come up with such a naughtily innovative solution when I went to school?

This caught my eye because Virgin just got into the banking business with the acquisition of Northern Rock, a British bank that we are gradually rebranding Virgin Money. In British banking, few things strike terror in the heart of a customer quite as much as the prospect of facing a tie-wearing, three-piece-suited bank manager across a huge mahogany desk. So we redesigned the banks.

One of our first changes was to remove the traditional wooden counters and replace them with informal seating areas. We also thought that the staff’s formal business attire was almost as solid a barrier to customer-friendly experiences as those counters were. When (to applause no less) we told our newest group of Virgin employees that (within reason) they could now wear whatever they want, the ties were the first thing to go.

I don’t use the word ‘hate’ often but I have always hated ties. Maybe because I’ve never seen the point. They are uncomfortable and serve no useful purpose. I am lucky to have always worked for myself, and therefore have never been a victim of corporate dress codes. For years, a sweater and jeans were my standard business attire. Someone once joked, ‘The day Richard shows up at the bank wearing a suit and tie, you’ll know that we are in serious trouble.’

Lately I have actually taken to wearing a jacket, which is handy since I encounter many different climates and situations through my business travel, but I will only wear a tie under extreme duress, which usually means some boring club that won’t let me in without a tie!

Suits and ties in an office are just another type of uniform, but in an arena where uniforms no longer serve any useful purpose. At one time they probably showed that the wearer was, at the very least, able to purchase and maintain a fairly expensive piece of fabric. Now, however, in an individualised, interconnected culture, your achievements speak for themselves. The suit and tie is an anachronism.

It used to be that the one male in the room with an open neck (which was usually me) would be self-conscious about it (which wasn’t me). Nowadays, however, I am delighted to note that it’s the man wearing the tie who is most likely to be the odd person out.

Probably one of the biggest breakthroughs in the gradual demise of the suit-and-tie dress code came, rather surprisingly, in some lofty political circles. Tony Blair was one of the first British prime ministers-Maggie Thatcher excepted-to frequently appear in public without ‘proper’ neckwear (to the outrage of the Daily Mail). Now President Obama has carried it to a level where he seems to be tieless almost 50 per cent of the time.

I have always prided myself on throwing out the rulebook when something proves a barrier to business-or is just plain silly. And there is no viable argument why ‘gentlemen’ should wear ties. The best anyone can muster is usually: ‘It’s expected,’ or ‘Everyone else will be wearing one.’ One of the signs that business culture has changed is that when people arrive for a business meeting with me, invariably the first thing they ask is, ‘Do you mind if we remove our ties?’ They surely never thought, ‘If we don’t wear our ties we’ll stand a lesser chance of getting the deal done.’ So why did they wear them in the first place?

So on behalf of the oppressed tie-wearers of the world, here is my appeal to those corporate despots who still force their male employees to put nooses around their necks every day: Please think again.