Scarfed!

As I was drenched in cloudy memories of my childhood the other day, a clear vision of a common winter scenario beamed itself out of the past and into my mind. It's of my mother admonishing me to put on a scarf before I went outside. Ugh, I abhorred wearing a scarf!

First off, even at a very young age, I knew in my heart of hearts that this was not an attractive piece of apparel on me. Perhaps the fashion magazines in those days made them look sophisticated and stylish, but I wasn't into that yet and never saw them.  I didn't know that Sofia Loren made a simple scarf look like a highly chic and desirable accessory. Instinctively, I knew scarves were not for me. 

Image from Vintage Virtue

Back then we had several large squares of silky, satiny or wooly fabrics designated as 'our scarves', along with several winter mufflers. These didn't seem to belong to any particular individual in our household. They simply resided in 'the scarf and glove drawer' and we could just take our pick. If the weather was inclement, my mother insisted we wear a scarf to walk to school. The cute winter hats and caps of today did not exist yet, at least not in my late 50s and 60s childhood. And stocking caps were only for men. Reluctantly, off I'd go and fetch out a scarf, fold it in half triangle-wise, drape it over my head and tie it under my chin. Back then I always went for the least attention-getting one I could find. And as soon as I was a block away from the house, I'd whip the offending fabric off and scrunch it up into my coat pocket.

Secondly, I knew that this head gear made me look exactly like a miniature peasant woman going off to the market stalls in her babushka. 

All I needed was a basket over my arm to complete the look. Little did I know then, that in a mere ten years, the peasant/prairie look would be de rigueur for flower children everywhere. But until that time rolled around, I loathed wearing scarves with a passion.

Even worse was when Mom made me wear a muffler in the winter. Our mother had a prodigious talent for knitting and crocheting. (At ten, she taught me to crochet and she promptly got a fat gray potholder from me for Christmas.) Among afghans and other things, she made mufflers and house-slippers that looked very nice. But she always managed to make them out of the roughest, most uncomfortable yarn she could get her hands on. She made the slippers out of a rug yarn so hard and durable, you couldn't even walk in them. They were like walking on sharp gravel in your bare feet. Any rugs she may have produced from said yarn must still be in existence somewhere with nary a sign of wear on them. Apparently determined to make sure the mufflers were as warm as possible, those were made out of some terribly scratchy wool that felt like wearing knitted Brillo pads. Wrapped around the lower half of my face, they trapped my breath, became sodden with my exhaled moisture, then froze and scraped the crap out of my tender skin. Before I knew it, my lips, nose and chin would be chapped as all get out. Misery! But this was one of her ways of showing us love, so I gritted my teeth and bore with it.

In my teens, it was fashionable to wear cute little triangle scarves with skinny ties that we'd often knot at the backs of our heads. Anyone remember those? I did like them because of the perky Gidget factor. But my head must be too flat in the back because I could never get those suckers to stay on. So those ended up languishing forgotten in a drawer. After that, scarves became a thing of my past, for years and years.

Sally Field as Gidget

Then in the late eighties or early nineties it was cool to wear ultra long winter scarves with your padded-shoulder coat. Wrapped multiple times around the neck, tails trailing past your knees, this was a very up-to-the-minute style statement worn with our door-knocker earrings and big mall hair. I can't tell you how many times I'd get to work to find I'd closed the car door on my 8 foot long scarf and driven off, dragging it through filthy, black slush for miles. Or caught the darn thing on one of those great honking earrings, yanking it right out of my poor ear.

Rolled up bandannas tied around one's head in a variety of ways became trendy in the grunge-y, punky nineties, but I never got into either of those styles. And for the career woman, beautifully printed silk scarves creatively tucked into the neckline of your suit jacket was cool. Again, that was never anything I adopted. It wasn't that I didn't like the look, I absolutely loved it. My neck is too short, so elaborate neckwear was never comfortable for me. Somehow the scarf would end up traveling upward and next thing I knew, I'd be wearing it over my chin and feeling like some avant-garde bandit. I always felt too fussed, therefore too aggravated to wear them. It just wasn't worth the fight. And as for bandannas, even if I wanted to wear them, I just couldn't keep the things from slipping off, short of stapling them down.

A few years ago, some ingenious designer brought us infinity scarves. Well, I can't begin tell you what kind of mental images the name alone drums up in my head. 

But it involves wearing an endless roll of fabric around your neck the rest of your life and never being able to remove it.

For someone who started out hating scarves, now they rather fascinate me. I truly do wish I could wear them. There are so many achingly divine ones out there! Wish I had the panache to be able to toss a gorgeous big square over my shoulders, fling the ends around my neck and elegantly sashay off into the sunset, but alas...I'd probably just trip over it.

Till next time,

"I'm not one of those girls who can think, 'Right, I'll put a scarf with that and a little brooch there and maybe a vintage jacket.' I'm so impressed with girls who look terrific in a little thing they picked up at a local charity shop. I just look scruffy when I try to do vintage." ~ Sophie Winkleman