I recently liberated one of my dad's old neckties from a rarely-opened closet at my parents' house, where it was languishing on a hanger with others of its breed, pressed between my high school letterman's jacket and an old sports coat. Though all the ties on the rack were ugly - some approaching hideous, especially the ones that dared to pair textured fabric with chocolate brown and royal blue stripes - one stood out as not only salvageable, but truly remarkable. Rich crimson in color, it sports an attractive horizontal paisley pattern, with muted silver highlights. My only concern is that it might not be wide enough.

From its vintage, which I estimate at somewhere in the period between 1967 and 1972, it is of course fashioned from polyester. Even better, the label on the back boasts that it has been tailored from "100% imported polyester." No sir, no second-rate domestic polyester here, inferior shit harvested by lumpen Nebraskan farmers and spun by illiterate white trash in Tennessee. Judging from the ornate design, this could only be Algerian (or perhaps Morrocan) polyester, plucked from the branches of the native polyester tree by nubile virgins and hand-woven by French artisans sequestered in underground catacombs. First class all the way.