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I care about clothes. I even sometimes care about clothes professionally, like when I’m raving about my style icons (Bob Newhart, Martin Freeman, Jonathan Hart, or Ralphie from A Christmas Story), ranking all of Antoni’s t-shirts on Queer Eye, or comparing every single fashion design show on TV. I care too much about the clothes that I see on TV and, before the pandemic, I even cared about the clothes that I myself wore.
But now that we’re in a pandemic-induced Groundhog Day scenario, I find it borderline impossible to muster up the gumption to put on anything more complicated than jeans and a polo to putter around my apartment in day in and day out. And it may be because I am so numb inside that I can no longer find the motivation to practice dressing up as a form self-care, something I once so strongly believed in, that I’ve turned an even sharper eye towards the shows I watch. And there is one trend that I have been eagerly waiting to see take off for decades—and now that I’ve gotten my wish, I keep muttering to myself, “Not like this…”
The trend, readers, is ascots—a trend that I have, quite possibly singlehandedly, been trying to resurrect for years. Now they’re popping up on my TV all the time—and not just because I can’t stop rewatching I Dream of Jeannie, Hart to Hart, and Batman ’66. I’m talking about new shows! They’re getting into ascots—and, lord howdy are they messy!
First, ascots popped up on Canada’s Drag Race, frequently worn around the neck of judge Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman. Now, I want it to be clear: I am not coming for Jeffrey right now, not after the way toxic Drag Race enemies ran him off Twitter. I am, however, coming for whatever is going on around his neck!
That ascot (or, more likely, a scarf worn like an ascot—there’s a difference, which I am pointing out because I have clearly lost my mind) is too big for the vibe. JBC’s jacket is tightly tailored, as is his shirt, and then there’s an eruption of chiffon-esque puffiness around his head. It looks like it’s going to unravel at any minute!
For comparison, I need to show the platonic ideals of ultimate, orderly, refined, cool ascot vibery: Adam West as Batman.
It’s firmly—but casually!—tucked, framed by a structured collar. It’s unquestionably there, and not going anywhere until Mr. Wayne slides down the Batpole.
Then there’s Paul F. Tompkins, my ultimate IRL ascot hero. The man knows what he’s doing at all times when it comes to neckwear (and he’s also funny, but right now we’re talking about ascots).
But one man (Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman) wearing one oversized ascot (okay, multiple across a whole season) does not a trend make. Enter a pair of period piece dramas: first, Lovecraft Country, one of the best shows of the year. I can’t think of a single problem with it… other than what creepy adversary William keeps wrapping around his neck!
The scariest thing in that episode wasn’t the murder—it was the state of William’s collar. Not only is the ascot just kinda droopy, the collar has completely given up. William needs to practice the magic of starch and ironing. He doesn’t look like a 1950s aristocrat so much as the sassy gay manager of an Express for men.
A few episodes later, we see him get ready in the morning, a process that involves wrapping what appears to be four feet of silk around his neck and calling it a day.
For comparison, here’s what the dashing Cary Grant looked like in To Catch a Thief, which was released around the time Lovecraft Country is set.
That’s how you do it, although it’s probably unfair to compare anyone to Cary Grant when it comes to wearing clothes. The man wore the hell out of some clothes.
Still, it wasn’t until Netflix dropped Ratched that I felt like I’d been admitted to a menswear asylum. The show kept chucking loosey goosey ascots at me, causing me to question my reality. Were ascots always as bunched up and overflowing as seen on Geoffrey from Fresh Prince of Bel-Air?
Were they as bulbous as the ones slung around the neck of Sharon Stone’s evil son?
They were not, and those pics of Cary Grant from 1955’s To Catch a Thief prove it! And honestly, it proves I’m not losing my mind—because everything about this year has made my grip on reality tenuous at best, and I’m not here to have my unshakable faith in cool neckwear rattled. And that’s why this trend, a trend that literally only I have noticed, gets to me: as one of the very few people under the age of 40 wearing ascots in 2020, I can’t look at these can’t-call-them-knots without feeling the fashion nightmare of an ascot falling apart around my neck, too. It’s a bad feeling! Is this a metaphor for how I constantly feel like the secure knot we’ve all tied around our lives is unraveling, threatening to throw everything deeper into chaos? I don’t want to think about it, so I’m moving on.
I get why ascots are having a moment. We’re in a period piece place right now (and thankfully so, because I’d rather be anywhere than 2020). Both Ratched and Lovecraft country harken back to yesteryear. There was a time when ascots, a simple piece of fabric shaped kinda like a kayak paddle, were what you wore when you were just chilling. TV, particularly retro sitcoms like Bewitched, always depicted a man coming home from work and trading in his suit jacket and necktie for a cardigan and an ascot. I call this move The Larry Tate.
I’m 100% sure this exactly what happened in literally every household in the ’60s.
To be clear: while I’m ragging on Ratched and Lovecraft Country for this one teeny styling choice, I am here for the shows of today bringing the styles of yesterday to life, to hopefully inspire others—I just want the ascots to be as put together as Mad Men!
But don’t let all these retro shows fool you into thinking that the ascot is just a style statement of yesterday. It can be for today, too, should any of us ever regularly interact with other humans face-to-face again. Just look at how Martin Freeman makes the look work.
A show doesn’t have to be a period piece to make ascots a thing, either. Ascots can be a thing of the here and now, and some shows prove that. While I am the actual only TV critic who does not watch Succession, I do know that Whoever Brian Cox Plays wears ascots and he wears them well.
Okay, yes, Brian Cox is in his 70s and he’s playing a filthy rich tycoon type, but still—that’s what a correct ascot looks like in 2020!
And for my fellow gays, there’s a real gay history to the ascot that I enjoy embracing—and it’s honestly why I can’t be totally irked by Bowyer-Chapman’s neckwear! He was firmly in our territory, and I appreciated the wink to gay style history. But, like, we just gotta make Paul Lynde proud.
What conclusions can I make at the end of a post containing over 1200 words and an obsessive amount of pictures all about ascots? Well, I can conclude that my managing editor really gives me too much freedom. I can conclude that I’m coming down hard on all these bad ascots because I have next to no power to come down hard on anything that actually matters. I can conclude that I’m a bit punchy because I haven’t been able to do my favorite activity in the world—putting together an outfit that makes me feel like a debonair ’60s sitcom star—in seven months.
But all those conclusions, while 100% valid, are beside the main point—the main point being: ascots are cool, they’ve always been cool, more people should wear them today, and the sloppy TV ascots of 2020 should dissuade no one from doing so.
Do it for Paul, Bruce, Cary, Paul, Larry, and Martin.
