The cravat is the ancestor of the modern necktie — a length of fabric worn around the neck, folded, tied, and arranged into elaborate configurations that served as the primary site of male decorative expression for nearly two centuries.
The cravat entered European fashion in the mid-seventeenth century, when Croatian mercenaries serving in the French army wore knotted scarves around their necks. Louis XIV adopted the style, and the French court elevated the cravat from military accessory to the most important single item in a gentleman’s wardrobe. The word itself is a corruption of Croat, referencing the soldiers who introduced it.
The cravat declined as an independent garment in the late nineteenth century, evolving into the modern necktie and the bow tie. But it never entirely vanished. The ascot cravat, worn with morning dress for formal daytime occasions, and the ruched cravat, worn as a fashion accessory by women in the 1970s and 1980s, both descend from the original cravat’s logic. In its essence, the cravat represents a principle that masculine dress has largely abandoned: that the neck is an appropriate site for decorative excess, and that a man’s status and taste can be judged by the way he arranges a piece of fabric at his throat.
