GET knotted. In a couple of curt words, that's today's advice to Edinburgh's menfolk. Sales are up five per cent and Britain spent £160 million on them last year.
So if they care about their appearance, want to get back into fashion, they must wear a tie.
They should pay attention to Kenneth Dick. Managing director of Maddocks Dick, he well knows what he is talking about.
Top of their trade in Scotland, his company made ties and scarves in the Royal Mile since 1951, until they relocated two years ago to Portobello High Street.
Renowned round the globe, they seem to have the business all tied up. "The tie rather lost its way in the early 90s," admits Ken, "but these past few it's been coming back.
We have to say, of course, it was never entirely out of sight. Certainly we never closed and, in saying so, we'd have to feel indebted to Jon Snow. You'll never see Jon anchoring Channel Four News without a tie.
His neckwear is never dull. It's so colourful that it's a talking point nationally.
"What's bringing ties right back into fashion is that, far from being regarded as a fad with men of a certain age, they are finding favour with today's generation, with the likes of Franz Ferdinand's Alex Kapranos.
And, don't forget, Kate Moss first fell for Pete Doherty when he was sporting an 80s shirt and tie. We shouldn't forget fastidious Bryan Ferry. Sartorially, Ferry has always been rated one of the sharpest performers on the music scene.
He's a classic shirt-and-tie man."
M D's range of customers is staggering. Their product, ties by the million, goes round the world.
Germany, Norway and Australia are the leading export markets.
Orders come in from organisations as diverse as Peking Cricket Club, Malta's Knights of St John, the Royal Scots and 42 Commando at Arbroath.
"We also count the SAS as loyal customers at their Hereford headquarters and when we discuss business with them it's a no-names-no-pack-drill thing.
First names only for the Special Air Service. All rather discreet.
"The Bangladesh national cricket team ordered 500 for the World Cup last month and we have a bespoke order for the Lebanese Silk Museum currently being established in Beirut.
"If you detect a preponderance of involvement with the military it's coincidental, yet by no means inappropriate. The company's founders, Englishman Rowley Maddocks and Edinburgher George Dick, my father, met on a gunnery course in the RAF at Drem in the Second World War.
"They were aircrew with Bomber Command and when Maddocks, shot down and imprisoned, returned to his pre-war profession on demob in 1945 he formed a design company in Edinburgh, with Dick a co-director.
They set up in the Canongate in 1951, ties and scarves their specialty in a we-never-looked-back partnership."
The founders ever in mind, Ken's sentimental attachment to the premises made it a near-unbearable wrench to desert them two years ago.
"Latterly they became a drain financially.
It made no sense to stay, with a hike in rates year after year. Besides, we were in an old, listed property and the facade, the fabric, had to be maintained to Royal Mile standards.
"We had 70,000sq ft there.
Here in Portobello, we function with 6000sq ft on two floors. We had 45 staff up there, here just 12 and, I have to tell you, I'm 55, I've been with the company 28 years and I'm the newest employee.
"Some 20 or 30 years ago, to be able to say your company was in the Royal Mile, to put it on your letter head .
. . well there was a certain cachet about it, it was such a prestigious address.
Today, it's far from the street as we knew it.
"A word here about our oldest employee, Mary, my father's sister. She's 87 and deaf.
She cuts and handstitches bow ties and ties for special orders. It's an equal split between silk and polyester ties in what we sell. Polyester ties cost £6, silk £15, so when you order, say, 100 silk ties at £15 against 100 at six quid you see it's largely down to the material.
"
Currently in production are 200 ties for the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society. So everything's tickety-boo with the tie people down at Porty. But Ken Dick can still girn when he recalls the company's Royal Mile era.
"You know, the Canongate has so much history, so much of what Scotland is all about - kings and queens rode down there, Mary Queen of Scots knew it at first hand, the Earl of Montrose dragged James Graham up the Canongate to be hung, drawn and quartered at the Mercat Cross, watched by his arch-rival the Duke of Argyll, for heaven's sake. It's all there and there's precious little in the way of plaques to inform info-hungry tourists. And look at the tat in a lot of the shops that have sprung up there.
"
While Kenneth Dick's despair is tempered by the comeback of the tie, he is still appalled to see gents in a smart, expensive suit, ruin their image with an open-neck shirt. "If only they could see themselves. Some of them look like they've been out on the tiles all night.
And I've known individuals turn up tieless for a job interview. Not in my employ, I'm afraid.
"Mind you, I'm the 60s generation.
In 1967, when I left the Royal High, I shredded my school tie. Ironic, don't you agree?"
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