For several years I tied my scarves the same way. Six years, give or take. Not once during that time did I question that I was engaging in properly stupid behaviour. Same knot. Same loose loop that I’d seen some dick necklace wearing boy dick model tie in a bullshit high street menswear Instagram account / video montage type thing circa 2015. Never stopped to question why some scarves draped nicely and some made me look like I was punishing myself after breakfast.
Turns out it wasn’t the knot.
Scarves are the problem. For years I was buying any old scarf that took my fancy online. Random silk squares, picked without once measuring it because how will it fit, my brain would ask, sceptical of my intentions, only for me to default back to thinking like I do with trainers where the sizing is just the sizing and eight and a half is eight and a fucking half and never occurred to me that scarves were different until my mate Dominic laughed at me outside a pub in December called out ‘why does it look like you’re wearing a flipping hand towel round your neck’ and I actually measured the shit out of that scarf.
The length of your scarf determines which knots you can even attempt
The thing nobody tells you when you’re staring down your new scarf, shiny brand new tag still attached, awkwardly adjusting your forearms so you can even attempt to tie it is that the length is responsible for about ninety percent of whether you’re even going to like the finished look. If a scarf is under fifty inches long take it off right now, throw it in the bin, YOU WILL NEVER GET GOOD AT TIERING SCARVES. Under fifty inches and you’re stuck with the idiot loop, the one where you fold it in half, drape it around your neck and pull the loose ends through the gap. There literally isn’t enough room on most scarf to do anything else without it looking like you’re trying to asphyxiate yourself. I had a scarf like this for years, lovely scarf, beautifully made silk, feels lovely but every time I tried to tie it with an actual knot, rather than the Windsor knot all trouser-snappers seem to sport these days, it looked wrong. fuck wrong. Tugged at weird angles and could never quite get it to look good. It wasn’t the fault of the knot. The scarf was sixty inches long.
I don’t know about you but when I start something past a certain size bracket it suddenly unlocks every possible option. The idiot loop obviously, but now you can do what I like to call the once around; where the scarf goes around your neck twice and the loose ends just dangly. There’s enough fabric there that when it goes around your neck a second time it doesn’t look like you’re trying to choke yourself. That was another thing I didn’t understand until I emptied out my entire scarf collection onto my bedroom floor, scarf throwing-up and all, laid them out by length using a fucking tape measure I actually bought from B&Q for Christ’s sake, felt crazy doing it but then realized, eureka moment, that the scarf I could tie ten different ways all looked incredibly dashing was forty two inches longer than the tricky one. Inches. If you’ve got fifty eight inches wanted sixty the scarf is going to fight you every step of the way. Trust me I spent years yelling at scarves.
What really pisses me off about every damn scarf sizing guide is they’ll give you a healthy range; mens scarves should be sixty to seventy inches they’ll say. Yeah okay but what they won’t specify is that depending on your height and neck size you should aim for the lower or upper end of that range. Am I particularly tall? No. Do scarves that are the full seventy inches look like they’ve been borrowed from my brother on me? Absolutely. My mate could wear that same scarf and it wouldn’t slack as much all the way down because he’s fucking giant. If all clothing was measured and labelled like damn near every scarf is then we’d know this stuff. Jackets are measured and labelled by both their length and width because people understand how important those couple of inches can be when it comes to a jacket fitting. Scarves shouldn’t be considered any different.
Width and fabric weight transform how the scarf moves around you
The next thing, which took me bloody ages to realize, is scarf width and actual fabric weight isn’t just there for aesthetics when the scarves are folded up next to each other on your wardrobe shelf. Those two things completely change how a scarf behaves once it’s tied around you and you’re going about your day, walking around, talking to people rather than just fucking spinning around in front of your mirror admiring your wonderful sense of style. Think about it; the wider a scarf is past let’s say twelve inches, a safe midpoint, the more you have to work with when tying fancy knots but it also drastically increases the bulk that’s going to end up sitting at the base of your throat sitting all day. Got a slimline overcoat? Pairing a thick, wide scarf with it is probably not going to look great. Same goes if you’re wearing the scarf with a button up and nothing else. I fell into this trap recently after patiently waiting for a scarf I wanted to appear online. Spotted the damn thing weeks before it dropped, scrolled past it so many times the sales app probably knows me by name. The listing said twelve inches but when it finally did show up… Turns out it was closer to fifteen inches. Thick. Lovely scarf. Now I have one nice scarf that doesn’t work with half the coats in my wardrobe.
Speaking of weight, this is another thing that no one ever tells you.
Heavier weight silk; think silk twill type material holds it knot.
Literally, once you’ve tied that baby up it stays put. Doesn’t slide, doesn’t droop, isn’t suddenly an entirely different knot by the time you’ve walked to work. Sounds insignificant until you’ve spent an entire day with a scarf that likes to knot itself loose every half hour because the silk it’s made from doesn’t have enough body to keep its shape. Trust me, I have that type of scarf too. Got the colours, never wins at tying knots unless they’re the scruffiest knot in the book. Anything that requires it to hold shape for more than five minutes and you’ve got problems. A lightweight scarf can look AMAZING goosednecked around your neck as a damn waistcoat might but ask it to hold up an actual knot for your commute and it’ll give up halfway to Welwyn Garden City.
The moral of the story is if you’re asking me what size scarf should you get the answer is none of your damn business. The length and weight your scarf is dictates what you can do with it so instead of reaching for that forty five inch beauty you need to be thinking about what you want to tie and get the scarf to complement that, not battle against it.
