I don’t need much to make me happy and I’m easy when it comes to luxury. My personal style is traditional classic, with a tad of boho thrown in for fun. When I buy something, I wear it to threads, as we say back home in Kentucky. I have one weakness though. Silk scarves. I love them. I collect them. I cherish them.
A starving gypsy living in Manhattan, I had one vintage Hermès scarf that went with me everywhere. It was a treasure and I kept it close. Always in my purse, shades of pink and blue, it was my silk security blanket. Perfect around my neck and shoulders on breezy, cool NYC evenings and it fared just as well in the air-conditioned offices where I worked. My scarf served as a dirty hair day head wrap that worked perfectly chic on the New York City streets, and I wore it often as a belt through my jeans loops, or sometimes as a waist sash. My scarf was a comfort on long flights to the west coast for work and short flights down south, going home. Nothing is more comfortable than a silk scarf on an airplane. It cools when the air is thick and stuffy, and warms in that chilly blowing, recycling air. My friends said my scarf smelled like me; Fracas, tuberose, vanilla and cloves.
When I got married and moved to Long Island, NY in 2005, I bought a 1997 SAAB convertible. I mostly drove with the top open, even in winter. One sunny afternoon in the late Spring, on the highway in heavy traffic, my handbag sitting on the passenger seat, I lost that beautiful scarf as it flew into the breeze and fluttered behind me into the vast expressway I’d just driven. I was wall to wall in speeding traffic and my scarf was gone forever. There was no chasing it, no saving it. I wonder if my beautiful scarf fell upon the windshield of a car that might have had an appreciation of the beauty and value of my treasured possession. I hope so. I hope someone got it, saved it, and loved it. Whomever got it knows the smell of me.
Now years later, I own ten Hermès scarves. They each are unique and beautiful, and I love them and wear them most often, but when I think of a Hermès scarf, I always think first of the one that got away.
Living The Love 