Stephen Fry - Frys Ties: Discover the Life and Ties of Stephen Fry

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First published by Michael Joseph in 2021

Copyright Stephen Fry, 2021
Photography Clare Winfield, 2021
Illustrations Stephanie von Reiswitz, 2021

Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry in a sketch from the BBC television series A Bit of Fry and Laurie, April 19th 1994 Don Smith/Radio Times/Getty Images
ITV Archive/Rex Features/Shutterstock
Robert Dighton (1752-1814), Portrait of George Beau Brummell (1778-1849), 1805 (colour litho) Bridgeman Images
Jermyn Court Hotel, Jermyn Street, London (engraving) Bridgeman Images
Andy Gotts
Dink Stover illustration J. C. Leyendecker

Colour reproduction by Altaimage Ltd

The moral right of the author has been asserted

ISBN: 978-1-405-94907-1

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

This all began back in March 2020. The public world had begun to shrink, but the domestic sphere was expanding in peculiar and unpredictable ways. With time and kitchen space on our hands, and yeast significantly less obtainable than marijuana or Yeezy footwear, proud photographs of homemade sourdough, flapjacks and banana bread began to proliferate on social-media streams. I was as guilty as anyone of contributing to this strange nuisance.

In other rooms, dust was being blown away, shelves artfully stocked for Zoom backgrounds, neglected cupboards excavated.

A week into lockdown, I found myself sneezingly foraging in long-forsaken wardrobes and chests of drawers, in the course of which I uncovered drawerfuls of ties, bow ties, cravats and scarves whose existence I had forgotten. Not forgotten, exactly with prompting, I could have described them but certainly abandoned and unthought of.

It came about that, on one of those tauntingly bright spring mornings when the forbidden outside world was all blossom and birdsong, I photographed a green silk necktie, composed a brief text on the subject of Faonnable, its maker, and posted the result on Instagram. Tens of thousands of likes and hundreds of replies and comments flew back, a response positive enough to encourage me to repeat the exercise the following day with another tie.

And so #fryties began.

More than 100 ties later, on 22 June I wrote, The days are getting longer now and the lockdown looser, and posted the final tie in the series. Many enthusiastic followers had been egging me to turn these posts into a book. Perhaps this was all part of the intensity (and boredom) of those early days of the pandemic. Now that I have actually gone ahead and produced such a book, those very same people might be thinking, Steady on, Stephen. We didnt really mean it. A book of ties? Why the what the how the I mean, huh?

It may be (and as I write this no one knows anything, as my old friend William Goldman famously wrote about Hollywood but, boy, does it apply to the lockdown too) that there will be a very strong resistance to any books, films or TV shows that go back to the worst days of the Covid-19 crisis. As if we want to be reminded of that, the general view might be. Too soon, too soon.

Well, this book is about ties. Coronavirus might have instigated the project, but I hope it can stand on its merits as a book that ponders, speculates on and celebrates ties.

But why ties?

Anyone can wear a tie. All you need is a neck, a shirt and a feel for colour.

Anyone can wear a tie, but few do. I am old enough to remember the time when the pavements of the City of London were populated by formidably formal figures perfectly arrayed in suit, collar and tie. Not just a collar and a tie, but a separate collar and a tie. Most of you will be too young to remember that men of all classes wore shirts with separate collars right up and into the 1960s. These were called grandad shirts by the girls and boys two generations below, who wore them without collars as amusing hand-me-downs. They made a good nightshirt too. Grandads themselves would only have been seen like that in their most relaxed moments. For work and Sunday best they would have affixed a collar (often heavily starched). This required a front and a back stud to anchor it all in place.

Both of my deceased grandfathers and a great-uncle had left collar boxes amongst the possessions which had come to us during my boyhood. These very adult and exotic objects intrigued and excited me, with their beautifully stamped monograms and their masculine aroma of camphor, bay rum, sandalwood, tobacco and leather. The collars inside were in various styles: the usual pointed turndown collar; a variant with rounded ends; the wing (as worn by Neville Chamberlain); and the imperial, which went straight up but, unlike the wing collar, was not folded down into triangles at the ends when properly worn, it forced the chin up high and gave one the air of a besashed and bemedalled European archduke.

As soon as I could, I took possession of these boxes (two circular and the other in a horseshoe shape) along with the collection of collarless shirts, silk and satin ties, starched collars and metal and ivory collar studs that accompanied them. I worked out, by tiresome trial and irksome error, the difference between a back stud and a front, and after many tears and curses became proficient in the art of dressing myself in the manner of two generations back. Rear stud first grunt then slip the tie in and round poke the tongue out to aid concentration fold the collar down dont crease it and finally, and most fiendishly, coordinate the thumb and fingers of both hands in such a way as to be able to insert the front stud without trapping the tie fierce stamping, sweating, and foul, foul language.

Oh, its a fiendish and fretful business, I assure you. That front stud has to be slipped through four different buttonholes two at the collar ends, and two on the shirt where today there would be a top button before getting a thumb or fingernail to close up the pivoting little disc at the rear. Vaguely similar to the business of doing up cufflinks, but twice as fiddly. If you managed it successfully, the tie would still be inside the collar, untwisted, and running free enough to be adjusted and tied. It was important to close the knot in such a way as to cover the stud. I still shake my head sorrowfully at period dramas on film and television today where the knot isnt done up fully and the stud (or worse still a button) is fully visible. Shoddy, I think to myself. Not done. Scarcely the ticket at all.

Which brings us on to the subject of me. What kind of teenager in the fab and groovy 1960s as they whirled psychedelically into the 70s would dress up in his grandfathers old togs and go into town sporting a shiny stiff collar and a silk or satin tie? A teenage Lord Snooty yearning to be beaten up by the Bash Street Kids, you might think. I suppose it did take a bit of courage on my part to dress quite so oddly, though I dont recall feeling especially brave. Perhaps I didnt care what people thought, an indifference to opinion that I have never since been able to recapture.