Professor of History John Mazis has been teaching at Hamline since 1999, a job he loves doing. He first came to the United States for college from his home country of Greece. One of his favorite things about history is making connections, trying to figure out how things are influenced by each other. However, historical connections are not the only kinds of ties he likes. Mazis also likes the fashionable kind.
With a collection of over one hundred ties, Mazis is able to go an entire academic year without wearing the same one twice. With such a colorful display full of variety, one has to wonder, how did Mazis end up with so many ties?
How it started
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To understand how Mazis ended up with so many ties in the first place, one must go back to before he was ever a professor, to the days when he was a college student himself, where he noticed his professors in suits and ties.
“When I was a student at the University of Minnesota, particularly graduate student, where I work[ed] closer with some professors, my main educators at this point in my life, they all wore suit and ties,” Mazis said.
This is where he got the idea that he should be wearing a suit and tie.
“Somehow I think subconsciously [that] gave me the impression that ‘if you are a history professor, you wear a tie,’ and then I start doing it here, and now I cannot think of myself coming to work without wearing a suit or a jacket and pants and a ties. That’s not me,” Mazis said.
He also enjoys looking at himself in the mirror with a suit and tie on, and he described that with so many ties, there are so many combinations possible in terms of how he dresses.
“If you wear a different tie, you can practically wear the same clothes and then nobody’s gonna remember your clothes, they’re gonna remember the tie,” Mazis said. “So, not that I wear the same clothes all the time, but there’s so many shirts you have, so many jackets, right? You cannot have – well I cannot have fifty jackets – but if I have ten jackets and a hundred ties, the combinations are endless.”
Slowly, the collection started building itself over time.
“I had one tie as an undergrad, and then I doubled it. I had two as a graduate student, and then when I start teaching, I start buying one here and one there. Then, I went a little bit wild,” Mazis said.
The tie collection
Mazis did not accumulate over one hundred ties in one day. He recalled that the first tie he got he no longer wears, nor is sure he still has.
“The first tie I got was red with some design, kind of a dark black design. I don’t know, I haven’t wear it in years. If I have it I kept it more for sentimental reasons more than anything else,” Mazis said.
The ways in which he got different ties are varied. Many of them were ties he saw and liked in department stores that he bought. Others were gifts. His daughters, Misia ‘14 and Zoe Mazis ‘17, who both graduated from Hamline, both enjoyed getting to pick out ties for him growing up.
“When I was a kid I loved picking new ones for him for holidays and getting to see him wear them to work,” Zoe said via email.
Mazis also recalled a time a student gifted him a predominantly green colored tie around eight to ten years ago.
“It was a very nice tie and he just didn’t warn me. He came to me and gave it to me and I said ‘oh, you didn’t-’, what can you say, right? But it was a nice tie, so I kept it,” Mazis said.
Mazis accumulated so many ties over the years that it got to the point where he started thinking it was getting to be a bit much.
“One day I said to my wife, ‘you know, this is getting a little bit ridiculous,’ and it’s not the money necessarily, I mean, you know, I didn’t buy a hundred ties in one day to see a big bill, but it’s like, ‘is this too much conspicuous consumption with no reason?’” Mazis said.
Mazis does not buy new ties anymore, but for a short while, he found a loophole to get more ties.
“I lied to my wife. I said ‘I’m not going to buy a tie again’, and I didn’t, but then I bought over the next couple of years about twenty bowties because they’re bowties, right?” Mazis said.
A large chunk of Mazis’s ties are Jerry Garcia (lead singer of The Grateful Dead) ties, which have different patterns Garcia painted that were later turned into ties. Mazis finds it amusing the irony of wearing ties from a guy who never wore ties in real life.
“I always laugh at the ‘what does that mean?’ Is it a capitalist society incorporated Jerry Garcia and are selling his ties and making money? And they’re laughing? Or is it Jerry Garcia from the grave laughing and say ‘I never wore a tie in my life and you middle class people buy my ties now’, right?” Mazis said.
Mazis also listed specific ties he wears for different holidays.
“I’ll usually wear [Christmas ties] the last couple of days of class before Christmas or I have one with the American flag that I wear for national holidays or I have one for Valentine’s Day. C’mon, you have to have one for Valentine’s Day.” Mazis said.
Mazis has four racks that he keeps his ties on, with two of them being round and two being more oblong. These racks help him stay organized and remember the order to wear them in in a given school year.
“Once I wear a tie, I put it in one of those tie racks that is for the ones I already wore this year,” Mazis said.
Mazis’s favorite tie
While Mazis prefers colorful ties, his favorite tie is actually what he described as his “most boring tie,” which he always wears on the first day of school. This tie is special because it belonged to his father, who was the one who taught him how to tie ties.
“When I came to the United States, because I was so young, I didn’t know how to tie a tie, and then once I start tying ties, I still didn’t know. I made a very simple tie, and of course today I would go to YouTube and find in one minute,” Mazis said. “Didn’t have that, and my father knew how to do ties, and one time I was in Greece and I said ‘can you teach me how to do a tie?’ and he taught me.”
Mazis always unties the knot on his ties, no matter how nice the knot is.
“I don’t care how good it looks, I’ll take it apart and I’ll put it away because that’s the kind of boy I am, I guess,” Mazis said.
However, his father, who died seven years ago, was one to keep ties with nice knots tied.
“My father was of the habit, if he liked a tie knot, to keep it there. So he loosened the tie, take it out, but leave the tie on, and after he died, I found one of his ties that he had not untied. My brother doesn’t wear ties, so that was the only tie that my father had at this point in his life. He was eighty years old,” Mazis said.
So when he found the tie, he decided to leave it the way it was and it is the only tie he does not untie.
“I found the tie and I took it with me, and I still have it. I have not taken the knot apart. I keep the part. It’s kind of a gray tie and I wear it the first day of school,” Mazis said.
So while it is not quite as colorful or decorative as his other ties, it is the most important and special tie in Mazis’s collection.
“That’s my favorite tie. It’s the most boring tie I have, but sentimentally, is very important to me,” Mazis said.
Anyone curious about this particular s
tory, Mazis wrote an opinion piece in the Minnesota Star Tribune this past Father’s Day about it, titled “On Father’s Day, for me, these are the literal ties that bind”.
Reactions
Misia recalled her father asking for help picking out ties to wear to work as a kid.
“I always thought it was kind of funny, but it matched his personality and style really well! He would ask me and my sister to help him pick between two when we were younger because he’s had his collection for years! But I also thought it was probably something fun and different for his classes to note about him as a professor,” Misia said via email.
Zoe mentioned her father’s ties bringing her joy growing up.
“My dad’s ties were always a source of joy for me as a kid and I hope seeing all the options he has makes students happy too!” Zoe said via email.
The ties are, in fact, something fun that students enjoy about Mazis. Self-proclaimed fan of Mazis and his ties, junior External Hamline Undergraduate Student Congress (HUSC) President, Anna Beaudry, who is currently in his History of Ancient Greece and Rome class, loves his bowties in particular.
“My personal favourite days are when he (occasionally) wears a bow tie. I am convinced that Professor Mazis in a bow tie is a good omen,” Beaudry said via email.
Mazis finds it amusing how students react to his ties once they catch on.
“I always joke and say, ‘you know, years from now you’re gonna remember nothing from my class, none of the information I gave you, none of the work, but you will remember I wore a whole bunch of ties,’” Mazis said.
John Mazis, the fashion rebel
A common misconception about ties that Mazis comes across is that they are difficult to put on. He agreed that learning at first was difficult, but once he got the hang of it, it has become second nature to him, as he can tie a tie in about fifteen to twenty seconds.
Another thing he noted is that it is becoming increasingly less common for professors to wear a suit and tie, which he is okay with, as he wants people to embrace whatever style they like.
“Not that many professors wear ties anymore, and that’s great. To each their own,” Mazis said.
However, Mazis believes that the ties are a part of who he is and what speaks to him. Since he self-described his fashion choices as “old-fashioned,” he proclaimed that that is what makes him rebellious.
“I’m the rebel, how about that? You know? Everybody thinks the rebel is the guy who dresses kind of modern or trendy and that’s true also. Well, I’m a different kind of rebel,” Mazis said.