Ties

The Cambridge Monarchists is not a membership organisation as such – there are no membership fees or cards – and it is proposed that this be reflected in use of its ties. They may be worn by anyone supporting the monarchy. No other connection is necessary. Therefore, please consider buying items as presents and passing details onto to anyone you know to be sympathetic to the cause of monarchy.

A small contribution from the sale of each item will be donated to Cambridge Monarchists.

Pictures

Design of the Tie

Dr John Horton writes:

For those wanting to understand the rationale of the design …

Though the wearing of ties has declined since the 1950s and markedly over the last decade, the “club tie” denoting membership of some particular organisation remains popular. For some men, indeed, such a tie is the only one they possess. If one excludes the single motif tie – never popular in practice – there are three broad categories of club tie: those with stripes only; those with emblems spread evenly over the whole tie (usually in diagonal lines); and those with both. It is often the striped tie which is considered the most prestigious – perhaps because it is the simplest of the three, perhaps because it is the most difficult to identify should the observer not already be familiar with it. Perversely, it is difficulty of identification – rather than ease – which is a popular characteristic for the two other categories too. (Text on a tie – other, perhaps, than a motto in an ancient language or an abbreviation – is not attractive.) Only the observer who already has some concept of the club tie will trouble the wearer by asking “What’s the tie?”.

The striped tie offers a surprisingly wide number of possibilities – not just because of the broad range of colours available but because of the large number of geometries. At first sight, the simplest is narrow stripes on a background. One can then alter the number of stripes, the width of the stripes, whether stripes of different colours touch each other or are separated to show background between them, and so on. Since, the striped tie has no emblems, it is the stripes’ colours and widths that must attract the eye. Thus, when an organisation has both a striped tie and a tie with emblems, it is usually the former that is brighter – or, even, more gawdy – and the latter that is more sober. Hence the striped tie is sometimes called the “country tie” and the tie with emblems the “town tie”.

The striped tie with emblems is perhaps the best all-rounder of the three categories, provided that the emblem is subtle. Organisations with a coat of arms have an immediate source for a suitable emblem, whether it be the whole shield or one or more charges taken from it.

In designing a Cambridge Monarchists’ tie, I was looking for colours and emblems that had royal connotations … but not obvious ones. For colours, I took inspiration from the monarch’s racing colours of purple, scarlet and gold. The purple used for the silks worn by a jockey riding for the King is a bright one, allowing the King’s horse to be identified easily when among many others or when out in the country. This is not a role required for a tie. I therefore elected to darken it. I saved the red and gold for stripes, brightening the red very slightly to a scarlet to give it more contrast with the violet background and expressing the gold as a deep yellow. The scarlet and gold stripes are adjacent but with background showing between them, and with the gold stripe slightly narrower than the red. The widths of the three narrow stripes – gold, background and scarlet – are in the ratio 1:2:3 (though not necessarily easy to achieve in fabric). This is the ratio of the white, red and white diagonals on our national flag.

Choice of an emblem was harder. I wanted to avoid the obvious crown (whether St Edward’s or Imperial) … or, indeed, anything else quite so obvious – such symbols belong to the Crown. Ideally, I wanted something that also had a Cambridge connection too. The Prince of Wales was created Duke of Cambridge in 2011 and remained known as such until 2022. Here was an opportunity. For arms, the Duke (as he was then known) was using the royal arms differenced by a label argent charged with an escallop gules on the central point. I therefore took the escallop, but changed its colour to light blue. This is an allusion to Cambridge, of course, but I deliberately avoided the shade now officially used by the university. (This has a strong green component and is in effect a light turquoise.)

Of course, one might argue that a connection between the escallop and Cambridge via a royal personage is somewhat contrived. However, there does exist a similar example so well known that many would not even recognise it as another instance. The heir apparent is so often created Prince of Wales that the heir apparent’s badge of three ostrich feathers enfiled by a coronet is now directly associated with Wales. Indeed, so strong has the association become that one sees claims that the badge belongs to Wales and that the Prince of Wales enjoys it only through his association with the principality thereby reversing the actual situation!

The final decision was about material. Silk comes in a number of finishes. I chose one of the more unusual: “non-crease” (or “uncrushable”) silk. This has a thick but soft texture and allows the wearer to tie a very attractive knot. It also has a distinct appearance which might almost be called speckled. In this sense it resembles “diapering” found in heraldry.

Wear

The University of Cambridge flies the university flag on several days throughout the year. These include days when congregations are held, St George’s Day and five royal anniversaries:

Date	Anniversary
Mid-June	Official birthday of the King
21st June	Birthday of the Prince of Wales
17th July	Birthday of the Queen
8th September	Accession of the King
14th November	Birthday of the King