Ties to the past
We all know how hard it is to get your hands around the past. So why not put the past around your neck? That’s possible in theory in the case of six bow ties once worn by the celebrated architect Walter Gropius (1883-1969). The half-dozen slender cravats are housed in a segmented archival box at the Harvard Graduate School of Design’s Frances Loeb Library. “It was the architecture gear of a certain era,” said Benjamin Prosky, GSD’s assistant dean for communications (and a tie-free, open-shirt kind of guy). Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus school and a visionary with nonconformist views, fled his native Germany in 1934 after receiving threats when the Nazis took control. Following a sojourn in London, he began teaching at Harvard in 1937. Photographs show that he favored bow ties, in earth tones or daringly bright prints. This sartorial habit was less Gropius’ personal taste and more a fixture of...