In part one we spoke about the history of cravats, how they originated and morphed into custom ties. in part 2 I will discuss more of the history and some of the the psychology behind custom ties or cravats as they were called in those days, invented of course by the Croation mercenaries who took price in their fearless ability to go to war to protect, even if it wasn’t even their own people.

I don’t thing the Croatians have ever forgotten or changed as far as this is concerned. Croatians these days are an extremely proud people and will protect what is their as they did with protecting Dubrovnik and Split aswell as surrounding towns  from destruction by the Bosnians and their compatriots in the last war that started and ended in the early 1990’s.

So Croatians are used to fighting for what they believe in, even if what they believe in is an ends to a means by being paid to fight some other country’s war.

So lets go back to the cravat or if you will, the first custom ties ever to be produced. Well simply, they were pieces of fabric cut or torn into strips and positioned around the mercenaries necks to identify their belonging to a certain fighting unit and also to identify themselves as Croats and not the nationality of the country fighting the war.

In todays terms, there is really no difference as to whether custom ties are made carefully with care and style of whether it was a piece or strip of fabric, the whole idea of wearing this cravat was to ensure that they had recognition from other foreign nationals they were fighting along side, aswell as to create a sense of belonging amongst themselves so that for example, if one man wearing a cravat got injured on the field then that man would most likely be helped by his compatriots, who were Croats and for the most part, unless they actually knew each other, the strip of fabric served to identify them as Croats so they could be helped by their compatriots.

The importance of this wearing of the strip of fabric lies in the fact that psychologically, although it was only a strip of old dyed fabric, it actually meant far more than that due to the importance of wearing the strip of fabric or cravat.

These days, nothing has changed perhaps only the fact that custom ties of all persuasions are worn for various different reasons- please, I am not including fashion custom ties into this discussion as those are completely reliant on the fashion taste or persuasion of the wearer.

I am referring more to the club or company or institution whose custom ties people wear to identify them as part of the group of organisation.

The wearing of these custom ties signifies nothing more than what was signified back in the 1700’s when strips of fabric were worn as cravats or essentially the first custom ties.