Tie one on! A new, lavishly illustrated book about scarves unravels their enduring appeal, writes DEIRDRE MCQUILLAN, and tells how to wear – or hang them – with panache

THE SCARF, FASHION’S fast-acting and most affordable multitasker, is back in vogue. It can work as a wrap for the head or shoulders, a halter top, a summer sarong, and is often a hot political item. A graphic scarf can add dash and personality to the plainest outfits, transform a dress or add glamour to denim jeans. Grace Kelly made Hermès scarves as famous as their handbags in that 1950s way, framing the face and knotted at the back, turning the carré into a mark of elegance and style.

Taking a leaf from Burberry’s “Art of the trench” social media campaign, Hermès launched “J’aime mon carré” last year, showing how young women in London, New York, Tokyo and Paris fashioned the scarf in their own sassy ways as a whacky bow, a beach wrap, a belt, a bracelet, and even a baby carrier. A new campaign with the same four girls is due later this year.

A handsome new book, Scarves, by Nicky Albrechtsen and Fola Solanke, is a definitive guide to 20th-century scarves, with a beautiful silk cover of an Op Art 1960s scarf. It covers topics such as the scarf’s role as style icon, as social history and advertising vehicle. It deals with the great scarf companies, historic and travel scarves, and the textile designers and artists behind them. Over the decades artists such as Bernard Buffet, Alexander Calder, Salvador Dalí, Barbara Hepworth, Robert MacBryde and Henri Matisse are some who used the scarf format as soft canvases for their work.

The book is lavishly illustrated with more than 250 full-page colour images, some of scarves never seen in print before. It also gives advice on collecting, on scarf fabrics, how to spot a fake, and has a list of resources, museums, markets and vintage shops, including Jenny Vander and George’s Street Market in Dublin.

Top designers know the value of expressing signature looks through scarves – remember the rush to buy the skull-printed chiffon squares bearing the initials McQ after the designer’s death? Collectors recognise that many can be valuable works of art in their own right. You may not care to hang images of Winston Churchill or Persian cats around your neck or wrap yourself in horses or flowers, but a mere square of silk can be a prized collector’s item as the book reveals.

Scarves by Nicky Albrechtsen and Fola Solanke is published by Thames Hudson (£28).

WRAPPING IT UP

A new Florence-based scarf enterprise called the Creative Archives, started by Pauric Sweeney’s former business partner Shwetal Patel, teams up-and-coming young designers and artists with traditional Italian artisans and the results are terrific.

Here in Ireland, Peter O’Brien, who once sent a Rochas Christmas card with his drawings in the shape of a silk scarf, repeated the idea with a chiffon scarf specially designed to accompany his debut Arnotts collection.

Susannagh Grogan is an Irish textile artist whose silk handrolled scarves have an international following. Another up-and-coming name is Lisa Ryder from Newport, Co Mayo, with her striking patterns, vibrant colours and prints. And on the international stage, watch out for Louis Vuitton’s forthcoming winter campaign, an exciting collaboration with the artist François Cadière on the new Eden silk scarf with artful suggestions on how to wear the new designs in a modish way.

TYING A SCARF

They are beautiful, but how to tie the darn things? I remember having a lesson from a Parisian friend on how to turn a silk square into a necktie by folding it into a flat thin line, then doing a reef knot (left over right, right over left).

If you go to the Liberty of London website, liberty.co.uk, there are helpful videos showing how to tie a scarf in different ways – the bow, the chiffon knot, the oversize, the halterneck and the plain headscarf, the latter the most popular with nearly 19,000 views.

The Five-Minute Scarf Arranger also shows how to twist, plait, knot and roll scarves into turbans, bandanas, continental loops, beach bags and belts.