The seductive power of the silk foulard

Foulard – doesn’t it sound so much more suggestive than the Anglo-Saxon scarf?

But that is the way with our French neighbours and silken scarves – at once a trophy, a social signifier and a seductive flourish that might swish past or simply shield la coiffure from the fluctuations in weather. The foulard is a gesture as much as it is an item – and it tells many tales.

At the Hermès Spring/Summer 26 collection, artistic director Nadège Vanhee reimagined the house’s leitmotif silk scarf as a flirtatious accessory to drape around the neck and down over the nipples via the revealing cut of her crop-leather harness tops. ‘I was thinking about the Camargue landscape and Arlésienne folk dress,’ said Vanhee of her stylistic triggers. Once a symbol of French upper-middle-class status, here the scarf took on an impromptu role of breast veil.

And don’t the French do impromptu well? It’s the reason why the silk scarf has been in the armoury of women (and men) for generations, magically transforming into a weather shield, flirtation tool, savvy neck wrap, sarong, bag accessory, and – via the ever-changing artistic prints – a talisman of the zeitgeist. Along the way, legions have tutored newbies in the dexterous skill of scarf tying, extolling its various functions in a way that British royalty never quite proffered.

‘What is interesting is how just a square of silk can become such a symbol for other things,’ says French author and writer Kelly Kaprielian. ‘For instance, wearing one vintage Hermès on my hair one day outside a pub in London, a man asked me if I was Muslim, while my scarf was – in my poor mind – a reference to the style icons of the 50s and 60s: Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly or Jackie Kennedy.’

In the UK, silk scarves were once firmly in the SW1 and shires postcodes, but now, thanks to the voracious appetite of Gen Z and a general impulse to upturn conventions, the scarf is coming into a new golden age. ‘We are draping and tying silk foulards to add colour, drama and interest to simple, elegant looks – styling small scarves on wrists as belts, hair ties and bandanas to bring colour and quirk and character to the everyday,’ says Jacqueline Ednie, head of design, scarves and soft accessories, at Liberty. ‘The origin of every Liberty scarf is an authentic archive source and each has been redrawn and reimagined for today,’ says Ednie, of the ever-growing library of styles.

The big boon to scarves is that they are precious yet versatile – wearing a big headscarf with a sporty tracksuit thwarts expectations, as does tying a triangle fold over the hips of a sheer midi skirt. Luxe brands, including Celine under the new artistic direction of American Michael Rider, are also upping the ante. Rider turned a blue-toned, white-edged, emblem-printed scarf into a number-one accessory, floating from bag handles, over shoulders and cowboy-style tucked into necklines.

In a delicious entente cordiale, I’m taken by the Bouquet Final design in Hermès’s seasonal collection, designed in collaboration with illustrators and artists across the globe. The bicolour orange and ivory design by English creative Katie Scott comes in a leather-fringed silk twilly version. In my view, that’s value-added swish and sway to the foulard game.