I've spent enough years in the tie manufacturing business to know that people rarely stop to think about why they wear a tie — they just wear one because it's expected. But every now and then, a question comes across my desk that genuinely makes me pause and think. A client asked me recently whether the custom ties we produce for their corporate team serve the same fundamental purpose as school ties. My first instinct was to say no, they're entirely different things. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised the answer is far more interesting than a simple yes or no.

To understand where I landed, it helps to look at how neckwear evolved from military dress into the institutional symbol it became. When European armies in the 17th century began adopting the cravat — originally tied around the necks of soldiers as part of their regimental uniform — it wasn't a fashion statement. It was identification. It told you, at a glance, which unit a man belonged to, which commanding officer he answered to, and by extension, what values and discipline he was expected to uphold. That function never really left the tie. It just migrated. From the parade ground, it moved into the British public schools of the 18th and 19th centuries, where stripped and patterned ties became the definitive mark of which house, which school, which tradition a boy belonged to. I would say that transition is one of the most significant moments in the social history of neckwear, because it's where the tie stopped being purely military and became institutional — and that shift set the template for everything that followed.

South Africa picked up that public school tradition enthusiastically. School ties in this country carry genuine weight. They're not just part of a uniform; they represent a school's ethos, its colours, its history. I've spoken to many adults who can still describe their old school tie in precise detail — the stripe widths, the background colour, the small woven badge at the tip. That kind of emotional imprinting doesn't happen by accident. It happens because school ties are designed, consciously or not, to create belonging. They mark membership in something larger than the individual, and they do it every single day, consistently, visibly.

Now here's where it gets interesting. When companies started developing strong corporate identities through the 1960s and into the 1980s, they reached for exactly the same tool. Custom ties became the corporate equivalent of the school tie — a wearable declaration of which team you're on. Don't get me wrong, the execution is different. Corporate custom ties are typically more refined, more carefully colour-matched to brand palettes, and these days they often involve considerable consultation around fabric weight and construction. At Vinuchi, we work through that process with clients in detail, because a poorly made corporate tie undermines the very message it's supposed to send. But the underlying impulse — to create a sense of shared identity through a consistent, visible symbol worn at the collar — is identical to what those British headmasters had in mind when they introduced striped ties by house colour.

One could say the only real difference is the context in which that belonging is expressed. School ties mark membership in an educational community at a formative stage of life. Custom ties mark membership in a professional community, often at a stage where people are building careers and professional reputations. Both carry a weight that goes beyond the fabric itself. Both signal to the outside world that the wearer has aligned themselves with something — a set of values, a standard of conduct, an identity.

What I find most compelling, back in the day when I first started thinking seriously about what ties actually do, is how little the core function has changed across four centuries. The military origins gave way to the school, the school gave way to the boardroom, and these days custom ties are worn everywhere from banking floors to hospitality teams to sports organisations. School ties remain as embedded in South African culture as they ever were. The materials have evolved, the manufacturing processes have become considerably more sophisticated, and the range of options available to a quality manufacturer like Vinuchi today would have been unimaginable fifty years ago — but the tie is still doing what it has always done. It's marking you as part of something. And I think that's a rather elegant piece of continuity in a world that changes almost everything else.