ESSAY / COMMENTARY
What Your Tie (or Lack of One) Says in the Annapolis Ecosystem
There was a time when walking into a legislative committee room or a county zoning hearing without a tie wasn't just poor etiquette—it was virtually impossible.
Between 1979 and 1992, if you worked in or around governance, the dress code was a rigid language. We wore suits every single day. The "power tie" was aggressively, unapologetically red—a visual artifact straight out of John Molloy’s Dress for Success manual. If you weren't wearing solid red, you were wearing gold or a deep mustard yellow. Blue was considered passive—a safe color for back-office technicians, not for negotiators or dealmakers.
Back then, the partisan lines were etched in silk. Republicans favored the stark red and gold; Democrats were far more likely to sport navy blue with small repeating white micro-patterns.
Then came the 1990s, and the red tie began its long retreat.
Suddenly, solid red felt like an '80s cliché. The new power tie became dark navy or charcoal, patterned with crisp white or silver micro-geometric foulards—or neat repeating pin-dots. The shift was subtle, but clear: raw dominance gave way to calculated technical expertise.
Today, if you see a man in a stark, unpatterned red tie in the corridors of State Circle or Baltimore, he usually falls into one of two categories: a candidate on a campaign flyer, or someone trying very hard to look like a politician on television.
Meanwhile, the powerhouse players in the statehouse ecosystem—the seasoned land-use attorneys, the veteran government relations consultants, the committee chairs—have settled almost exclusively into blue. Navy or mid-blue with a tight white or light-silver repeating pattern is the undisputed uniform of the insider. It doesn't scream for attention. It projects stability, trust, and a willingness to negotiate.
The Continuum of State House Style
In Annapolis, power is a continuum. Walk down the hallway during the 90-day session and you are looking at a living timeline. The lobbyist currently running a multi-million-dollar advocacy campaign almost certainly started as a 22-year-old legislative staffer in the '80s or '90s, carrying coffee, drafting committee amendments, and taking mental notes on how the real titans carried themselves.
And no one carried himself quite like Senate President Thomas V. "Mike" Miller, Jr.
Mike Miller understood the theater of power better than almost anyone in modern Maryland history. Long before the statehouse style softened, Miller exhibited an effortless, classic sartorial elegance. Always turned out in a tailored dark suit, a crisp white dress shirt, a razor-sharp tie, and a folded white pocket square, Miller looked like he had stepped right out of the gold-framed oil paintings lining the Senate chamber walls. He didn't look like he was trying to dress well—he simply looked like the institution itself.
Young staffers coming up under Miller’s long tenure—whether they went on to become chiefs of staff, delegates, or high-stakes lobbyists—absorbed that visual lesson: How you present yourself signals how much you respect the room.
The Fall of the Haberdasher
To understand how drastically this world has changed, you only have to look at where those generations bought their ties.
Thirty years ago, Brooks Brothers held a near-monopoly on the legislative psyche. Their classic diagonal repp-stripes—swirling down from the wearer's left shoulder to right hip, distinct from British regimental stripes—were the official currency of East Coast power.
In Baltimore, power players went to Eddie Jacobs on Roland Avenue for soft-shoulder suits or mapped their wardrobes around classic Charles Street haberdashers like Wm. H. Lohmeyer. In Annapolis, traditional men’s shops along Main Street and nearby Brooks Brothers outposts outfitted generations of delegates, lobbyists, and state bureaucrats.
Today, those daily power-dressing temples have mostly vanished or pivoted. Brooks Brothers survived reorganization, but its overwhelming dominance over institutional style has evaporated.
The "No-Tie" Power Move
Which brings us to the modern State House corridor.
Ties haven't disappeared completely, but they've been relegated to special occasions, formal addresses, or hard-fought floor debates. What has replaced them is a style phenomenon that still catches my eye: the tailored suit worn with a crisp, open-collar shirt—and no tie at all.
It is a deliberate aesthetic statement. It attempts to communicate two conflicting things at once: I am formal enough to respect the room, but I am too effective and approachable to be bound by its traditional constraints. It says: Look at me—I'm dressy and casual simultaneously.
Whether it actually works depends entirely on who is wearing it, but it marks an unmistakable loosening of the old guard's rules.
A Personal Rebellion
Having spent a substantial portion of my adult life wrapped in high-count wool suits and tied silk, I eventually reached a point of saturation. I got rid of every suit I owned.
My concession to formal dress these days is a traditional navy blue blazer with brass buttons. And in place of the standard necktie for dressier gatherings, I’ve taken up a subtle act of middle-aged rebellion: a fine, six-foot-long silk scarf—roughly ten inches wide—tied in the manner of an ascot, or wrapped casually depending on the room.
It’s comfortable, distinct, and completely free from the visual signaling of modern political uniforming.
In the end, what we wear into a hearing room or a client meeting still conveys intent. The red-tie/blue-tie divide of the 1980s may have faded into history, but the language of clothing in Maryland politics hasn't disappeared—it has just become a little more subtle.
And for those of us who spent decades watching staffers become elders while the uniform evolved around them, watching the rules change is half the fun.
I’m going to comment before I read the article, and then come back to revise if necessary.
Fuck all of those 30-40 year old rules. If you can pull off no tie, and wear it with confidence, do it.
Room stands at attention when my tie goes on though 😤😂