Once upon a tie… Ensnared by vintage neckwear, collector always on the lookout to grow his cache of broad, brash cravats By: David Sanderson Posted: 6:00 AM CST Saturday, Feb. 1, 2025

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/02/2025 (255 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Paul Rempel laughs heartily upon being informed there is a name for people like him.

How is that spelled again, Rempel asks, repeating the word aloud; G-R-A-B-A…?

A grabatologist is the term assigned to a person who collects neckties.

It’s fair to say the few dozen ties diligently stored in Rempel’s bedroom closet pale in comparison to the reported 23,500 belonging to South African collector Johan Nortier, the current Guinness World Record holder in that department.

Nonetheless, when the St. Boniface Hospital employee heard last fall that his place of work would be staging an exhibit highlighting staff members’ hobbies and interests, he figured why knot, err, not add his colourful cache of vintage ties from the 1940s to the mix?

“Every second year they do a staff thing at the Buhler Museum,” says Rempel, referring to a spacious, free-to-the-public gallery situated on the main level of St. Boniface Hospital, where the 64-year-old father of two grown children has been a distribution-warehouse employee since 1978. (The only things he doesn’t deliver at St. B are babies, he cracks.)

“I’d thought about showing them off in the past, and when I mentioned bringing in a few of my favourites this time around, they were all over it,” he goes on, seated inside a Southdale coffee shop, a 10-minute stroll away from his home in Windsor Park.

Co-workers who took in the entertaining presentation, which showcased everything from paintings to pottery, chided Rempel, telling him they found it amusing that a person who collects neckwear in his spare time has never been spotted wearing a tie to the office. Not even once.

“If they read this, they’ll probably start bugging me again. Only now they’ll want to know if my business card is going to start reading ‘Paul Rempel, grabatologist.’”

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Rempel, who was born and raised in Gretna, guesses he was seven years old the first time his parents asked/forced him to don a tie — likely a clip-on — for Sunday church service.

During his adult life, he always kept a few nondescript ties on a hanger, one of which he’d reach for if he was attending a formal occasion such as a wedding or funeral. For the most part, though, neckties were never a key part of his wardrobe.

Fifteen years ago, Rempel came across a small, black-and-white snapshot of his father David and mother Kathryn, taken in what he believes to be 1946, not long after they were married. It was the lone pic he had of just the two of them, so he took it to a local photography shop to be enlarged.

He was admiring the reproduction days later when his eye was drawn to his dad’s tie: a dark specimen augmented by a trio of lighter-coloured circles.

Never mind that he couldn’t make out what shade the various patterns were, owing to the greyscale motif; all he could think was how cool would it be to own something similar — a unique-looking tie with a story behind it — as a nod to his late pop?

Armed with measurements he gleaned from the internet — men’s neckties in the ’40s were noticeably wide, as much as 15 centimetres at the blade — he started hitting thrift store after thrift store. He found his fair share of old ties, but zilch from the era he was focused on.

“Next I started searching websites like eBay but that turned out to be bit of a crapshoot,” he says, mentioning the majority of ties manufactured 80-plus years ago were made of rayon or wool, what with silk being in short supply because of the Second World War.

“A guy would say his tie was from the ’40s and I’d take him at his word, only when it came, it was either too narrow or too long — ties from the ’40s stopped at the navel, pretty much — for that to have been true.”

It was only after he discovered online businesses specifically dedicated to vintage clothing that he began to achieve success. Before long, ties as bright as they were broad began arriving in his mailbox.

Chocolate-brown numbers adorned with floating squiggles. Navy blues with abstract flowers woven into the fabric. Burgundies boasting arrowheads and sawtooth arcs.

It went on and on. (According to an essay on neckwear from the fashion blog Vintage Dancer, “by 1943, men were tired of drab conservatism. They turned to new, bold colours and big geometric designs.”)

“For me, condition is always No. 1,” he says, flipping over a black tie emblazoned with a series of slotted cubes, to show off a tag reading “Park Avenue Aristocrat Cravat.”

“If there’s even a small stain, I’m not interested. Same if it looks like it’s starting to fray at the edges.”

The most he has paid for a tie to date was US$56, but only because that one, described on an accompanying invoice as a “wide swing tie with horizontal strips and tumbling squares,” was deemed to be deadstock, meaning it was unsold inventory left over from the ’40s that had never been sold, much less worn.

“I still haven’t had the heart to wear it myself, since it’s essentially brand new,” he says, noting he’ll occasionally sport one of his others to church, where he can expect to be on the receiving end of comments such as “great tie” or “looking sharp.”

“Maybe if my kids decide to take me out for my 65th birthday later this year, say to Rae & Jerry’s, I’ll throw it on,” Rempel says.

Rob Chadwick is the owner of Rusty Zipper Vintage Clothing, an Oregon-based enterprise that stocks over 20,000 individual pieces of men’s and women’s apparel in a 6,300-square-foot warehouse near Scotts Mills, 65 kilometres south of Portland.

Neckties are one of Chadwick’s most-requested items. In fact, 15 minutes before we reached him, he was preparing orders for customers in Warsaw, Zurich and Toronto.

“Like anything else, certain brands are more collectible,” Chadwick says when reached at work.

“Certain styles sell very well, too: the skinniest of the skinny ties, wide rayon ties with hunting themes or animals and hand-painted ’50s ties.”

While he can’t say for certain, Chadwick is of the opinion that 50 per cent of those who buy vintage neckties from him fully intend to wear them when they’re out and about.

Others purchase them strictly for collecting purposes.

He also understands how popular they can be as an accessory for a Halloween costume — thin, rockabilly-style ties from the ’50s literally fly out the door — plus he regularly deals with television- and film-production crews on the hunt for period-specific accoutrements for actors.

“Since we launched nearly 30 years ago, we’ve shipped over 15,000 vintage neckties to every U.S. state, Canadian province and 23 other countries, including Saudi Arabia, Lithuania, Israel and Latvia,” Chadwick states.

“Vintage ties are my favourite. It’s the one area of men’s apparel where at any point in time you’d find bold, colourful designs that — with the exception of ’70s disco shirts — didn’t often make it into other areas of men’s fashion.”

“Inspired by the ties my dad would have worn when he was in his 20s.”–Display placard

Back to Rempel; one of the questions he was required to answer before allowing his ties to be part of the Buhler Gallery exhibit was how much he felt his ties were worth, in the event of damage or theft.

Sure, he could have come up with a commensurate monetary amount if he did the math — he has kept most of his receipts — only he was left wondering, how does one put a value on emotion?

After all, as was explained on a white placard on the wall next to his display, his pastime was “inspired by the ties my dad would have worn when he was in his 20s.”

In a hurry, he scribbled down $500, but what he probably should have entered was “priceless,” he says.

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca

 

The short and long of neckwear nearly a century old

Anthony L’Abbate has always been a dedicated follower of fashion.

His father was a tailor, as was one of his uncles. So 33 years ago when he came across a flashy men’s necktie from the 1920s at a church garage sale priced at a measly 10 cents, he couldn’t get a dime out of his wallet fast enough.

Nowadays, L’Abbate, the preservation manager at Rochester, N.Y.’s George Eastman Museum, the world’s oldest photography museum, rarely shows up for work sans a tie close to 100 years old.

“It’s funny because for the longest time, that one I got from the church was the only old tie I had,” L’Abbate says, when reached at home. “Then starting around 2010, I began actively seeking out vintage ties — specifically ones from the ’20s and ’30s — and I haven’t slowed down much since.”

L’Abbate says there are a couple of guideposts he uses, to ensure what he’s knotting around his collar is from the correct era. For starters, if a tie’s lining isn’t white, it’s likely on point, as clothiers didn’t adopt that practice until the early 1940s, he says. Secondly, the thinner part of the tie that’s hidden in the back, called the tail, tends to be very narrow at the top, before flaring out like a bell-bottom.

“Then there’s how short they were,” he adds with a chuckle. “Men weren’t supposed to appear in public in shirt sleeves back then — they either kept their jacket on or wore a vest — so it didn’t matter that the tie came to just above the belly button. I remember the first time I put one on, I was like, if I don’t wear something over this I’m going to look like Oliver Hardy.”

L’Abbate, who guesses he has close to 200 vintage ties of all colours and descriptions (one of his faves boasts vibrant brown and orange semi-circles), admits he’s not always the easiest person to watch a movie with, especially period films.

“I do tend to pick things apart if I see an actor wearing a tie that was obviously manufactured in the ’40s, when the movie is set during the ’20s or early ’30s,” he says. “I mean, if you’re going to go to all that trouble, why not do it right?”

— David Sanderson