Frenchwomen seem to have a secret way with a silk scarf. I love the way they look, but when I try to tie my own scarves, the result resembles a kid’s bandanna or feels lumpy and voluminous. How do they do it? — Suzanne, New York
Scarves are to Frenchwomen, or at least the stereotypical Frenchwoman, what sneakers are to Americans: the accessory that is as much a part of national identity as the flag and apple pie (or the baguette). Brigitte Bardot wore scarves tied around her hair. Brigitte Macron often wears them around her neck. So does Marion Cotillard. Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, has made the scarf a signature.
Indeed, the streets in Paris often seem rife with women wearing scarves tied just so around their necks, on their handbags or in their hair. But tying a silk scarf so that it looks insouciant turns out to be much harder than it appears. At least for those who do not grow up playing with scarves. It’s enough to give a wannabe scarf wearer an insecurity complex.
“You have to be born in France to really master the art of wearing a scarf,” said the writer Dana Thomas, a New York Times contributor, who has lived in Paris for decades. “Nobody can wear them as well, because the item is so deeply rooted in that culture.”
To this point: When I asked Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele, a former fashion editor for Vogue and Elle and the woman who styled some very early Hermès scarf ads, how she styled her own scarves, she looked at me in confusion and said, “I just do tch tch tch,” twisting her hands dramatically in the air and tossing them around her neck. Then she shrugged. She liked to wear her scarves as headbands, she said, knotted off center at the top of her head or tied around a ponytail with the ends left to dangle.
Lucie d’Halluin, 25, a painter and Ms. Thomas’s daughter, said she probably had about 40 scarves, “from large ones that could be a blanket to tiny squares that I’ll wear in my hair or with a suit, tied around my neck like a choker.” But she also found the how-to part difficult to explain.
“You just know how to do it,” she said. “You start when you’re a kid and mimic your grandmother or aunt. You just put a scarf on, like putting socks on. It’s not something you think about. It’s in your wardrobe vocabulary.”
Perhaps that is why there have been so many books published on how to wear (or tie) a scarf, including the New York Times best-selling “How to Tie a Scarf: 33 Styles”; why Hermès, a brand practically synonymous with silk scarves, offers both instructional videos and a deck of cards depicting various ways to tie its scarves; and why there are more than 6,000 posts on TikTok under the hashtag #scarfstyling.
Still, Ms. d’Halluin had some specific advice, mostly about what not to do. First, she said, if you are wearing what Hermès calls a carré — a silk square that measures 90 centimeters by 90 centimeters (about 35 inches) — “I would never wrap it around my neck more than once, unless it’s really cold out, because then you look like you are wearing an airplane pillow.” She added that it’s better to knot your scarf in the front or on the side of the neck, rather than the back.
And if you want to wear your scarf like a choker, she advised, “fold, then fluff, then twist.”
Don’t forget the fluffing part, she said, because without it “you’ll look like a flight attendant.” It’s the thing that adds the … well, je ne sais quoi.
Your Style Questions, Answered
Every week on Open Thread, Vanessa will answer a reader’s fashion-related question, which you can send to her anytime via email or X. Questions are edited and condensed.
Vanessa Friedman has been the fashion director and chief fashion critic for The Times since 2014.
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