If you look up the origin of the necktie on wikipedia, you will read that it came from Croatia or some other such offal. In fact, it comes out of the conflict of the Hundred Years War between the English and the French. During the middle era of that war, the French began to hang English knights which was considered something of a war crime at the time. Your captors were expected to ransom you for a reasonable price and send you back home to convalesce, possibly to fight again (That’s if you were nobility. It was perfectly acceptable to execute peasants, who were often times coerced into military service against their will). In response, the mounted gallantry started wearing a noose into battle, to show they were willing to die for crown and country and that the threat of hanging would not deter them.
As the war waned, mounted knights began to be replaced by pikeman and the canon. These units were no longer made up of noblemen and their vassals, but were professional soldiers, paid with money levied against the landed classes. Nonetheless, the fashion of proffering your bravery around your neck continued.
After the war and in the centuries to come, England turned its attentions to business and commerce. Veterans on the lookout for work, wore their battle-nooses to show potential employers that they were honorable and respected men. By convention only those who had faced battle should wear the symbol, but there was no law or statute of enforcement, so outright fraud become the norm for much of the business classes.
When industrialization took hold in the British Isles, rope was replaced with cloth, reflecting Britain's dominance in the textile industry. Other innovations included the shortening of the loose end of the hangman’s knot after a number of horrific accidents where linemen were pulled in and ground up by the whirring of pitiless machines.
The “tie” as it’s now called, continues to be worn today in the business world. The presentation has changed since the blood soaked battles of yore, but the symbolism stands strong. To wear a tie is to say, “There is no life after work, for I have come to die for this endeavor!”