Scarf Season Arrives in Paris

It was bound to happen. They were just waiting for the ideal conditions.

On Monday September 17 those conditions arrived: a cool light breeze, grey skies, a workday, a change of seasons. And on cue, like some kind of larva or flower, scarves appeared.

Every Parisian—man, woman, irrespective of age, race, origin and income—donned one.

Well, maybe not everyone, but those who missed the prompt on the 17th, having been caught neck-naked before their peers, colleagues and closest enemies, quickly returned to their closet and drawers so as to emerge scarved and thus fully clothed on the 18th.

Suddenly they were—they are—everywhere: loose cotton scarves, thick wool scarves, tight silk scarves, draped scarves, discreet solids, polyester pleats, crinkled pinks, tasseled greens, turquoise blues, bulging fleeces, bamboo stripes, traditional prints, flower prints, faded paisleys, Iraqi plaids, neck-worn kaffiyehs, knit scarves falling like pigtails down the back or over the breast, old swatches, roughened cashmeres, just-in-case shawls, shoulder throws, muffler scarves, back-hanging wraps, pendulum ties, double loops, triple loops, slip knots, braids, knot rows, roll-and-tucks, school-age fringes, wrap-and-knots, ironic ascots, devil-may-care wrap-arounds, bright kerchiefs, fringed wrap-and-sweeps, guadaloops, africontours, branded squares, and so much more.

The famous French rentrée of September—that back to school, back to work, back to the ranks of the unemployed, back to friends, back to political crises, that time of new restaurants, new prices, new exhibitions, new books, new lovers, easy break-ups—is but a delusion of change (plus ça change…). Because what Parisians most long for is their neck-wrap of a security blanket against the elements and against changing fashion.

Yes, against changing fashion. Foreign visitors incorrectly see the scarf as a sign of fashion. If it were then everyone would be wearing the same scarf in the same way with the same three or four print or colors. No, the scarf is non-fashion. It’s a Parisian’s pacifier, a self-comforting sign that he or she is headed somewhere and is not alone, like a cup of coffee in the hand of a New Yorker, like a religious symbol or garment worn by a fundamentalist. The scarf quickens the step and lifts the chin and makes its wearer feel determined, aloof, protected, dressed in a constant embrace.

Here, on the damp, anonymous streets of the capital, each Parisian carries his or her scarf like an imaginary friend that can be twisted, knotted, tied and retied yet always remain, a crumb catching, ash dropped, perfumed, personal odored companion, a visible swath of intimate comfort.

Listening to the chatter of springtime in Paris the uninitiated may believe that Parisians live for summer vacation (vacations, they will say in the plural, for there are so many places to vacate to and from), but such chatter is a falsified or delusional expression of joy. The pursuit of warm-weather happiness is not written in the constitution of French being. Ask a Parisian in the third week of September how her vacations went and how her rentrée is going and she’ll say, “Oh, that was long ago.” Indeed, three weeks on, those destinations ( Thailand, Croatia, Morocco, Israel, Italy, the beach, the village, the friends, the cousins, the Americas) reveal nothing about who she is or wishes to be.

For what the Parisian wishes to be above all is that woman in the street or that man in the café in the season in which she or he feels most at home, the season that coincides with the start of autumn but goes far beyond that, that most Parisian of seasons, the season that, through rain, shine, mist, flurry, warm-spell, cold-spell, good news and bad news will continue well into spring: scarf season.

It has arrived.

© 2012, Gary Lee Kraut