I Was Wrong About Scarves

I've had a strange, rather standoffish relationship with scarves. It's not the chunky, hand knit, oversized, or even the pashmina varieties of scarf that I'm talking about here - those I feel like I know what to do with. Those an easy pairing with a modern, casual, and now locked-down sartorial life. No, it's those lightweight silky ones - sometimes square sometimes long, those are the ones that have always felt like a step too far into the conservative zone for my sartorial choices. Sure, I'd go for it and wear one every once in a while, but I never really felt like it was clicking.

I judged scarves for their presence in the memories I had of the little old ladies I used to see at the grocery store as a child; the ladies who wore scarves and plastic rain bonnets to protect the rollers in their hair. When do they take them out!? I simply wasn't able to see past that visual, and it left me with the notion that scarves were perhaps some sort of gateway drug, culminating in leaving the house in rollers and the subsequent need for plastic rain bonnets.

Allow the record to reflect that while I may not have been wrong about rollers, I have been wrong, very wrong in fact, about scarves. Whether this is an actual sartorial epiphany or just the fact that I've now grown old enough to have lost the ability to care about a garment's shady or uncool reputation, I suppose the end result is the same.

Most likely this new affinity for scarves comes from the hours I spend curating the vintage shop. I sift through a lot of stuff these days, born of the desire to have a well-rounded edit of stuff that I myself would actually want to wear - my one and only criteria for the things I stock. Let me tell you, if you're ever unlcear about your own personal sartorial identity, stock a shop (or a Pinterest board) full of things that you would want to wear, and stand back. Your style soon becomes evident, in all its quirky glory. But I digress. I think the act of sifting through my stock has pushed me to accept scarves for what they truly are, simple, artful pieces of fabric with about ten thousand uses - and counting.