In 1964 when The Beatles arrived in the U.S. for the first time, there was so much going on that nobody really noticed the fact that they were all wearing matching black silk knit ties. Over time, however, the photos of John, Paul, George, and Ringo bouncing off a Pan Am plane at JFK airport have been so widely circulated that it’s difficult not to pick out the fact that they decided to wear knit ties to what they probably knew would be one of the most influential moments in Rock history. And so it’s easy to wonder if, by extension, the knit tie is perhaps the piece of neck-ware seen around the world, and whether music as we know it would be the same if they had decided to wear something else that day.