When I was a young teen Looney Toons ties were real big, I must have owned 10 of them. Then the bro's counceled us on wearing "commercialized" ties with worldy characters on them, nipped that little fad in the bud but quick.
Ah yes...I got called on the carpet a time or two for the very same thing.
As crazy as it may sound nowadays, back in the late 60s to early 70s in Oklahoma City there came an idiotic "tie width rules" complete with "tie width police".
It seems that really wide paisley ties were all the hippie fashion, so the tie police nazis made the rule that the tie could not be over 2 1/4 inches in width and a "general tie pattern" subjective ruling was made on basis of loud colors or patterns.
Later it came about that many of the young black brothers got into the "Malcolm X" look with those really really skinny ties only about 1/2" wide. As it turned out, some of us white guys picked up on it and did really really skinny ties to get back at the tie cops. So, for white guys only, a minimum width of 1" came about. The black guys were left alone about it, I suppose because the tie police were all white.
There was also quite a bit of contraversy over pastel colored dress shirts - the tie police thought they were worldly. Until the new circuit overseer showed up with a pastel dress shirt.
So, the tie police gave up on that and focused their attention on banning white shoes and belts - they looked a little too much like TV evangalists, especially when many of the midaged elders got into that and wore them up on the platform at assemblies.
We never had "width-of-tie" rules...until Miami Vice was big on television. Then a lot of the young brothers fancied themselves as Don Johnson. They got the pastel or white suit with the oversized jacket and either the real skinny, leather tie or the "t-shirt under the jacket" look. I remember one MS who had a part on the assembly had to go buy some socks because he tried to emulate the loafer-no sock look. Needless to say, there was more than one service meeting part on dress and grooming back during that fad.
Back in the late 60s, early 70s a friend of my family got in trouble for wearing "flared" dress pants for an assembly part. This was when the hippie/hip generation was starting to influence clothing styles across the board all the way up to the conservative suits. This brother was not allowed to wear the "flared" dress pants on stage for his part. He had to borrow some pants to change into.
Pastel shirts were never a problem with suits...but dark colored dress shirts with suits caused a stir. I remember the first dark shirt I wore with a suit. It was dark grey, the suit black, the tie blood red and grey. You would've thought that I had committed some big, heinous crime...and this was in 1993, not that long ago when you think about it.
