Seasons of life when I regularly wore a coat & tie:
Sunday Church (mid-1970s-90s)
Growing up, my home church was a dress-up kind of place and so from maybe high school-ish on through adulthood it was coat & tie every Sunday. This was especially the case the various seasons I was on church staff (as choir director, as pastoral intern, and as pastoral associate). Times and culture change though and nowadays the fashion is much more casual.
Amstutz, Lynch & Assoc. (1984-5)
When this tech startup moved from a basement in the San Francisco’s Outer Sunset District to a Financial District office on Market St. we started dressing up more.
Dallas Theological Seminary (1985-88, 89-90)
The South! The Bible Belt! Daytime classes during the regular Fall and Spring terms had a coat & tie dress code. This did relax some years later, as culture changed. I still have and wear a blue blazer (pictured below) some friends in the Cantonese congregation at my church gave me before I started school.
California Citizens Redistricting Commission (2020- )
Zoom! Zoom! Zoom!
I’m a compact guy and so prefer narrow ties.
Many I inherited from my late father-in-law, who was a man of style and panache. You can imagine him in the 1950’s palling around Chinatown, or at the race track, or up in Reno.
Russell Yee 