The skinny tie – usually no more than two inches – was introduced in the 1950s to complement more fitted clothes. It became popular in the 1960s at the height of Beatlemania and snowballed into mod fashion.
In the New Wave scene, UK school leavers liberated from uniform strictures adapted the slim end of the old school tie as an ironic emblem of conformity, while in the US nothing said, “our bar band just stopped wearing Hawaiian shirts last week” better than a loosely-knotted faux leather keyboard tie draped around the neck of your keyboard player.