Autumn brings manifold pleasures: crunching leaves, amber light, woodsmoke-scented air, and – for the impressionable – the pumpkin-spice latte. However, by far the greatest seasonal delight is the annual laying on of the scarf. This time-honoured ritual is an ancient ceremony enjoyed by young and old, male and female of every race, colour and creed.
Scarves may be sported the world over, but they hold special charm for the British with our blustery, mercurial climate; one minute glacial, the next back to swelter. A scarf can be whipped on or off as Mother Nature decrees: the practical all-rounder that adds flair – and life to our wind-pinched faces. Our heroes have revelled in them accordingly, whether Bob Cratchit with his poor man’s comforter, Doctor Who Tom Baker’s 18ft trademark, or Harry Potter in wine and gold Gryffindor stripes. Show me the Briton and I’ll show you his scarf.
The fair sex deploys foulards for what used to be referred to as “dash”. The late Queen rode in her Hermès incarnations, socialite Babe Paley tied one jauntily about her bag, while Grace Kelly sported hers by way of a sling. Their injection of vitality should not be underestimated. A contemporary said of Audrey Hepburn that, as an impoverished chorus girl, she possessed “one skirt, one blouse, one pair of shoes, and a beret, but she had 14 scarves. What she did with them week by week you wouldn’t believe”.
My own addiction is such that I may never pay off my mortgage, yet will be able to occupy a silken shanty town should push come to shove and the streets. Not that I don’t live for a vast, woollen number. For my 50th birthday, I presented myself with a mammoth, Klein-blue serpent by the modish designer Charles Jeffrey Loverboy. Alas, so mighty was it that I was too puny to carry its weight, in danger of dislocating a shoulder.
Still, it is men for whom scarves hold particular allure – and the most winning sartorial function. Other than ties (now largely forsaken) and socks (a worry when too conspicuous), the scarf remains the last bastion of creativity and contained foppery.
Some may signal the “he never married” status of a Noël Coward or Quentin Crisp; others signal edgy bohemian glamour à la Charles Baudelaire, Mick Jagger and David Bowie. Rock god Lenny Kravitz donned such a ludicrously blanket-scale take when he took a stroll in 2012 that it became a meme, wags photoshopping it to become ever more engulfing.
Less fashionably – if no less fabulously – scarves provide the acceptable flourish within all too quotidian male dress, whether that flourish comes care of John Lewis, Paul Smith or Savile Row. Beyond October, sans scarf a chap’s outfit remains lacking, whether said chap is Gandalf the Great, Little Piglet, or every garden snowman.
Self-expression is offered not merely via garment choice, but in the style of its wearing. For the British male, scarf-tying provides an instant social and psychological reading: over-one-shoulder (overgrown schoolboy); once-around (artistic pretensions); over-hand (military discipline); the drape (bouncer / spiv); and Chelsea knot (fancies himself).
As for its emotional weight, the scarf becomes today’s equivalent of a knight wearing his lord or lady’s emblem, whether pledging affiliation to a football team, university, designer, or sweetheart. With his scarf a man makes clear who he is – to his last gasp. The final act I performed for my beloved father was to lay him out for cremation, coins for Charon on his chest, a Shakespeare poem in his hand, his head on my mother’s college scarf.