Is there a right way to wear a scarf? The French have mastered this as an artform. Photo: Pexels
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.
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“You have to be born in France to really master the art of wearing a scarf,” said 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 Hermes 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 centre at the top of her head or tied around a ponytail with the ends left to dangle.
Lucie D’Halluin, 25, a painter and Thomas’ daughter, said she probably had about 40 scarves.
These range from large ones that could be a blanket to tiny squares that she wears in her hair or with a suit, tied around her 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 bestselling How To Tie A Scarf: 33 Styles; why Hermes, 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, D’Halluin had some specific advice, mostly about what not to do.
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"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 said, if you are wearing what Hermes calls a carre – a silk square that measures 90cm by 90cm.
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. – ©2025 The New York Times Company/Vanessa Friedman
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
