MovieChat Forums > Are You Being Served? (1972) Discussion > Clip on bow tie

Clip on bow tie

posted 9 years ago by MacMurrah
5 replies | jump to latest

What was the back story with the Clip on bow tie episode? An English thing?

[–] amyghost 9 years ago

You can get clip-on bow ties in the US.

[–] MacMurrah 9 years ago

The point was , they made an awful big deal about handing off the bow-tie customer.
Like as if it's anathema at a clothing store.
I want to know if its considered crass in England.

[–] amyghost 9 years ago

I'd imagine it would be. They're looked on as pretty low-rent here in the states, so a more class-conscious society like England would probably really see them as beyond the pale; and Grace Bros. Haberdashery had some pretensions to quality, even if it was a lot more pretense than quality, lol.

[–] gambitcolumbus 9 years ago

I always took it to mean that the staff:

1) Considered a clip-on tie to be rather tacky (even if they did sell them).
2) Probably cheaper than regular tie, so not worth their time since commission would be minimal.

Note Mr Humphries got the customer to get the regular type of bow tie (no clip-on, no elastic) by suggesting to the customer that it would look tacky for someone in his position to have anything but a normal tie. Although I found it amusing Mr Humphries had the elastic one :)

[–] hughwm 9 years ago

Clip on bow ties would certainly have been considered tacky by well dressed gentleman in Britain in the 1970s.