This is a list of notable bow tie wearers, real and fictional; notable people for whom the wearing of a bow tie (when not in formal dress) is also a notable characteristic.
Bow tie wearing can be a notable characteristic for an individual. Men's clothier Jack Freedman told The New York Times that wearing a bow tie "is a statement maker" that identifies a person as an individual because "it's not generally in fashion". Numerous writers and bow tie sellers have observed that the popularity of this type of neckwear can rise and fall with the fortunes of the well-known people who wear them.
Until the 20th century, the bow tie was the general rule for neckties. Starting in early 20th century, the bow tie started to become more rare.
In 1996, The Wall Street Journal quoted statistics from the Neckwear Association of America showing that bow ties represent three percent of the 100 million ties sold each year in the United States, most of them part of formal wear, such as for white tie and black tie.
Attention to famous bow tie wearers in commerce and fashion commentary
Those who write about bow ties often mention famous people who wear or have worn them. These writers often make the point that the image conveyed to others by a bow tie can be affected by associations with celebrities and famous people in the past.
A common fashion accessory in the 19th century, the bow tie had positive associations by mid-20th century, bolstered by real-world personalities, including President Franklin Roosevelt and Sir Winston Churchill, as well as "devil-may-care" characters portrayed in films by actors, including Humphrey Bogart and Frank Sinatra. By the 1970s, however, the bow tie became associated with nerds and geeks, such as the slapstick characters played by Jerry Lewis, and Mayberry's fictional deputy sheriff, Barney Fife. This perception was reinforced by the bow tie's association with Pee-wee Herman and U.S. Senator Paul Simon.
The perceptions associated with bow ties started to take another turn in the 1980s, when Success Magazine founder, W. Clement Stone, spoke out in support of the neck wear after the publication by fashion author John Molloy which observed, "Wear a bow tie and nobody will take you seriously."Quoted in Stone associated bow-tie wearing with virility, aggressiveness, and salesmanship. In further defense of the bow tie, its use by figures such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Saul Bellow has been cited.
Celebrities' effect on bow-tie wearing
When a celebrity is noticed wearing a bow tie, it can affect bow tie sales; sales see an improvement when the accessory is associated with younger celebrities such as Tucker Carlson. When Raj Bhakta wore one during his stint on The Apprentice, haberdashers reported customers asking for a bow tie which looked like his. Similarly, after Matt Smith made his debut as the bow tie-wearing Eleventh Doctor in Doctor Who, Topman reported a significant increase in demand for bow ties (from 3% of all tie sales to 14%).
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. wrote about his decision as a college student to start wearing bow ties in his memoir A Life in the Twentieth Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917–1950. Schlesinger remarked that he made his decision in part because a number of famous men he admired had a penchant for the neck wear. In addition, he noted that they prevent dinner mishaps, saying, "It is impossible, or at least it requires extreme agility, to spill anything on a bow tie."
Commercial interests using famous wearers to encourage sales Bow tie sellers often cite famous people who have worn the neckwear as a way of encouraging more customers. Jack Cutone, co-founder of Boston Bow Tie, noted that there is ample evidence to support the uniqueness and stature of those who wear bow ties, including Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud."Boston Bow Tie Launches Web Site to Market Distinctive and Stylish Bow Ties With a Traditional Flair" news release posted on Business Wire, December 30, 1999, according to the LookSmart FindArticles Web site, accessed January 17, 2007 Beau Ties Ltd., an online bow tie seller, has featured a "C. Everett Koop bow tie," complete with an endorsement by Koop, who was Surgeon General of the United States during the Reagan administration.http://www.beautiesltd.com/NewsItem.aspx?pn_deptid=6352 News release from Beau Ties Ltd., dated October 3, 2006 and titled "Dr. C. Everett Koop, Former U.S. Surgeon General, and Beau Ties Ltd. Create Birthday Bow Tie" Carrot & Gibbs, another bow tie seller, lists several famous wearers on its bow tie web page.http://www.greatbows.com/store/index.asp?pageid=2 Web page titled "The Definitive Bow" at the Carrot & Gibbs Web site, accessed January 17, 2007
Bow tie wearers of the nineteenth century Bow ties were conventional attire in the nineteenth century. Portraits of U.S. presidents from Van Buren through McKinley commonly show them in bow ties. Wearing of a bow tie was seldom commented upon and did not form part of the public perception of figures such as American inventor Thomas Edison.http://men.style.com/gq/fashion/styleguy/accessories/96 Style Guy column at MensStyle.com Web site (associated with GQ magazine), dated September 2003, accessed January 17, 2006
Bow tie wearers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries
Architects
Le Corbusier (1887–1965), architect who wore "his trademark bow tie" Peter Eisenman (born 1932), architect and academicEisenman is shown wearing a yellow bow tie in the photo illustrating the article in Archinect, July 27, 2004 Kester Rattenbury, Robert Bevan, and Kieran Long, Architects Today, Volume 2004, page 1988. Describes Eisenman as "the consummate intellectual New Yorker (big specs, big bow tie, big hair)..."John Taylor, Mr. In-Between: Deconstructing Peter Eisenman, New York Magazine, October 17, 1988, pages 46–52. "Eisenman wears bow ties and suspenders and those owlish glasses that for some reason are so popular among architects." Walter Gropius (1883–1969), architect, six of whose bow ties are kept by Harvardhttp://www.iceandcoal.org/nfa/harvardephemera.html While not absolutely clear, this Web page indicates Gropius was known for his bow ties: Web page titled "Stories from 'The Chronicle': Cataloguing Harvard's Ephemera", article by Lawrence Biemiller at Biemiller's Web site, the Web page indicates the article is from "The Chronicle of Higher Education. Published January 23, 2004." accessed January 18, 2007: "After three years of work, Ms. Norris not only knows how many of Walter Gropius's bow ties Harvard has (six), but also where they are (the Graduate School of Design)" Louis Kahn (1901/1902–1974), architect and academic Owen Luder (1928–2021), architect
Educators
College and university professors Leon Botstein (born 1946), president of Bard CollegeJacob M. Appel, 04/issue/col_botstein.html Leon Botstein: The Maestro of Annandale, Education Update, January 2004. Refers to his "trademark bowtie." George S. Bridges, former Whitman College and current Evergreen State College presidentBow Tie, Whitman College Bookstore, accessed June 2, 2011. "Our Whitman College president proudly wears a bow tie every day. Maybe you should too..." George Campbell Jr. (born 1945), president of Cooper UnionClem Richardson, Cooper Union president George Cambell to exit -- on own terms, NY Daily News, May 3, 2010 James E. Cofer, Fulbright Scholar and President of Missouri State University and the University of Louisiana at Monroe. Donald J. Cram, chemist, Nobel Prize laureate. Angus Deaton, Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs Emeritus at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Economics Department at Princeton University, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureate William Durden, president of Dickinson College E. Gordon Gee (born 1944), president of West Virginia University and former president of Vanderbilt University, Brown University, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Ohio State University: "When E. Gordon Gee was fifteen years old, he made a defining sartorial decision. He began wearing a bow tie."http://www.brownalumnimagazine.com/storydetail.cfm?ID=1113 Boucher, Norman, "E. Gordon Gee: Introducing the seventeenth president", Brown Alumni Magazine, September/October 1997 Alexander Fleming (1881–1955), Scottish biologist, pharmacologist, Nobel Prize laureate Alt URL Jerry Herron, dean of the Irvin D. Reid Honors College at Wayne State University Richard Hofstadter, American historian Eric R. Kandel (born 1929), neurobiology professor and Nobel Prize laureate with a "trademark bow tie"http://www.nyas.org/snc/update.asp?UpdateID=21 Burke, Adrienne, "Gazing at Science Stars: An Ansel Adams protégée captures the nature of brilliance", article in Science and the City webzine of the New York Academy of Sciences, September 16, 2005, accessed January 18, 2007 Fritz Albert Lipmann, German-American biochemist, Nobel Prize laureate. William Lipscomb, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate. R. Bowen Loftin (born 1949), chancellor of the University of Missouri. Quoted as saying "The similarity between Bowen and Bowtie tends to help people remember my name." Bohumil Makovsky, Director of Bands at Oklahoma A&M College Jean-Luc Marion, French philosopher Saeed Nafisi (born 1895), Iranian scholar Santa Ono (born 1962), President & Vice-Chancellor of The University of British Columbia, President Emeritus of University of Cincinnati, President of University of Michigan. Immunologist and vision researcher. Paul C. Pribbenow, president of Augsburg University. Paul Samuelson (1915–2009), professor emeritus of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Nobel Prize winner. Erwin Schrödinger, father of quantum physics Eugene H. Spafford, cybersecurity pioneer, professor at Purdue University, and founder of the CERIAS research institute. Edward C. Taylor, Princeton University Professor of Chemistry and inventor of certain chemotherapeutic pharmaceuticals. William E. Troutt, 19th president of Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. Celâl Şengör, Turkish geologist
Other educators
Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004), U.S. historian, professor, attorney, writer, U.S. Librarian of Congress 1975-1987 Bill Nye (born 1955), television science program host, is a "gangly guy in the blue lab coat and bow tie". Davis, Pamela, "Bill Nye, the successful guy", article in The St. Petersburg Times, October 11, 1999, accessed January 18, 2007 On why he wears bow ties: "If you're working with liquid nitrogen and your tie falls into it, it's funny in a way to the audience but it's also — pun intended — a little bit of a pain in the neck."Humor is a part of his program, so the bow tie may spoof academics and associate him with comedians. Rahner, Mark, "Eye to eye with Bill Nye the Science Guy", article in The_Seattle_Times, April 26, 2005, accessed January 18, 2007 Alexander Oparin (1894–1980), Soviet biochemist notable for his contributions to the theory of the origin of lifeA. L. Kursanov, Sketches to a Portrait of A.I. Oparin , Lecture presented at the Opening of the International Symposium "Biochemistry of the 21st Century: Problems and Frontiers", devoted to The One Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of A. I. Oparin, Moscow, May 13—18, 1995. "The bow tie ... was an immutable detail of ... Oparin's attire for his whole life. This tie ... was almost a part of his personality, one that added some aura of self-confidence and authority to his whole demeanor." Murray Rothbard (1926–1995), libertarian economist and historian who "always wore a conservative suit and bow tie."http://www.libertystory.net/LSTHINKROTHBARDLIFE.htm Web page titled "The Life and Times of Murray N. Rothbard [...]" at Libertystory.net Web site, accessed January 18, 2006 Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (1917–2007), "famed for his trademark bow ties"