A strange thing happened to me last night for the first time in my life. I was asked to remove my tie. Not by an attractive lady, nor by a man from the St John’s Ambulance wishing to massage my heart, but by the chap on reception at an achingly trendy club on the edge of the City of London – Shoreditch House.
The experience was particularly odd because I don’t normally wear a tie during working hours, but had just come from a lunch at the RAC Club where, of course, ties are de rigueur.
The significance of being asked to remove my tie, was heightened because I was in Shoreditch House to listen to that distinguished marketing thinker, Mark Earls of Herdmeister fame, speaking at a Marketing Society digital dinner about connectedness and our compulsive habit of copying each other.
Mark observes that modern fads – like SuBo – happen with frightening speed, because we copy other people’s tastes. Mark also points out that digital communications, can lead to the fragmenting of our society into smaller groups.
But, I note that whatever tribe we belong to, we continue to find the visual signals we send to each other deeply and primitively important.
When groups of people are gathered together, fashions may be different between one age group and another and between one side of London and another, but the desire to conform to the norms of the group is strong, and the group itself clearly feels more comfortable if outsiders do not signal their strangeness.