Scarf Anxieties

A few weeks ago, I saw an Instagram video titled “Stop wearing your scarf like this.” With maximum theatrics, an unsmiling man chucked his scarf around his head a few times, as I’ve done my whole life. Apparently I’ve been doing it wrong. This guy then demonstrated how he tucked one end of his scarf through a cavity on the opposite side to, I guess, keep it in place. He walked offscreen, satisfied (though still unsmiling), and I scrolled on.

I didn’t think of that video again until this weekend while scrolling through photos of the Celine show from Paris, in which a number of models had their necks bundled in bouffant scarves up to their nostrils. They looked like neck braces designed by John Chamberlain. I wondered if the models struggled to breathe as they snaked down the runway.

It wasn’t even the first respiratorily risky scarf I’d seen in Paris. At Loewe, models wore duvet scarfs, again looped around their necks up to the nose and, again, with an end shooting out over the shoulder. Later, at Givenchy, models wore soft leather scarves knotted so that the blue tails landed like the hands of a clock at 9:25.

Nothing in fashion can just be anymore. Everything is a piece, a statement, a thing you need to fret over, reconsider, overthink. There’s just too much money in telling us that we’re doing it all wrong.

I watch that influencer’s video and think, Wait, am I tying my scarf wrong? In turn, his view count goes up. (This is a content creator cottage industry. I’ve come across videos telling me I’m wearing my belt wrong, which I’m pretty sure is impossible unless I missed a loop.)

As for the fashion houses, any blank space on a model — any cavity unclaimed by door knocker earrings, leopard hand warmers or a scarf exploded to comforter proportions — is a missed opportunity to sway the audience that they need this new accessory.

Back in New York, I passed a man in a trench coat with a yellow scarf underneath. It wasn’t looped around his neck, it just dangled down, tilted and uneven. He clearly hadn’t overthought this accessory. He hadn’t even thought about it. I prefer his approach.

Other things worth knowing about:

A Celine accessory I enjoyed more than a tricky scarf: The models lined up outside to usher guests into the Celine show all wore cutesy ties — some with critters, some in primary colors and one in a fantastic piano motif. Cheeky and easy — as a good tie should be.
I guess this is a scarf newsletter now. In a much too reverent McQueen show (Seán McGirr, please, stop worrying so much about what the brand used to be), I did chuckle at a pixelated version of McQueen’s once ubiquitous skull scarf. I could see that selling well.
Duran Lantink’s Jean Paul Gaultier was better! After receiving some scathing reviews for his debut show at JPG last year (the hairy naked man bodysuit still haunts me), Lantink found surer footing this time, with his corseted trenches, Fair Isles and gingham hourglass dresses.
You could buy approximately 87 pints of Guinness — with tip! — for the price of the JW Anderson collaborative Guinness toweling jacket. (I still like it.)
If the Balenciaga show is the start of the “Euphoria” marketing campaign for next season, HBO is in trouble. The designer Pierpaolo Piccioli collaborated with the show’s creator, Sam Levinson, on a video installation that ran behind a collection with a lotta black, big coats and stuff that, frankly, would have been deemed stale and sexless by anyone on the show. If you are interested in the show’s clothes, “Euphoria Fashion” by the show’s costume designer Heidi Bivens is more worth your time.