When did laborers stop wearing ties?

[xenoxols]

In old worksite photos many blue collar workers are wearing a tie with their outfit. It's my understanding that Americans stopped wearing suits as workwear after the war, but I've had a harder time estimating when they stopped wearing ties. Was this purely fashion, or was there some reason for this?

 

[tropicalbob]

Great question. I was born in 1951 and can remember the milkmen in white suits with black bowties and gas station attendants wearing ties. I'd guess it was in the late '50's early '60's it stopped, along with all kinds of service such as checking your tire pressure, cleaning your windows, etc.

 

[Bjorn240]

When the last one got pulled into the lathe.

 

[Edward]

Depends what you mean by 'labourers', of course. On this side of the Atlantic, it conjures images of navvies, digging ditches, building walls... jobs in which pretty much nobody wore a tie since ta least the turn of the twentieth century. During the 20s and 30s, military surplus collarless shirts were in significant demand as work clothes for this sort of worker in the UK and Ireland; indeed, I've seen period ads for civilian collarless shirts - collarless by design, as distinct from simply wearing a formal shirt but not adding a stiff collar - which were a market response to the popularity of the military 'greyback' shirts used for this purpose.

Ties were common in other jobs that didn't involve machinery for some decades. I remember interviewing for a supermarket job in Belfast back in the 90s; they required collar, tie and 'proper trousers' under a company shop coat. Smaller / independent businesses tended to be jeans/tshirt by that point (though for men over forty you'd often still see them dress more formally in the same businesses as compared to younger colleagues). Most uniformed retailed jobs at some point in the early 2000s switched to polo-shirts as a replacement, around the same time as most primary schools dropped ties from their uniforms in favour of polo shirts too. By this point in the UK, they've all but disappeared from most blue collar jobs. Ties are also fast on their way out in many white collar jobs too, in favour of, if not casual dress, the wearing of a suit and collar, but no tie. The weirdest look is when people embrace the fashion for a three-piece suit, but don't bother with a tie. Totally jarring to my eye, but if that's their fashion norm...

 

[Benny Holiday]

[QUOTE="Edward, post: 2607208, member: 2930" The weirdest look is when people embrace the fashion for a three-piece suit, but don't bother with a tie. Totally jarring to my eye, but if that's their fashion norm...[/QUOTE]

There are many posts in which our opinions or thoughts on a topic are parallel Edward, but none more so than this one! It's one look I just don't comprehend.