Headscarves

Lucy’s column for July 8.
Scarflo…1
They say that if you hang on to it long enough, it will come back into fashion. So it’s sod’s law that, within a couple of years of divesting my drawers of my stash of headscarves, some of which dated back to my teens, the fashion afficianados are threatening a revival.
I say "threatening" because, let’s face it, the only folk who could wear this horrible head-gear with any semblance of style or panache were the likes of Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, and Jackie Onassis, who teamed hers with over-sized sun glasses and became an iconic trend-setter.
The rest of us resembled our grannies on a bad hair day. Indeed, every day must have been a bad hair day for my own gran, because my overwhelming image of the lady we called Little Nell was of her, hail, rain or shine, scurrying off to feed her hens, housed half-way up the highest hill in Two Dales, her woollen head-square firmly knotted under her chin.
She wasn’t the only person in my childhood to adopt this accessory. Come to think of it, just about every female I knew wore one. But they were more out of practicality and necessity than any fashion statement. If they weren’t keeping out the cold, they were keeping the curlers in place. Stand outside the gates of any factory in the 40s and 50s, and the headscarf, or, when tied another way, the turban, was as part of the uniform as the overalls and dungarees.
It’s with these visions in mind that me and the headscarf never quite clicked. I tried it knotted right on the neck, perched prettily on the point of the chin, or, quelle chic, fastened at the back with the bow barely visible, swashbuckling-style, and there was always the danger of somebody asking me if I’d got ear-ache, or was I merely disguising a pile of pin-curls. I guess I just had the wrong sort of face. It helped if you were pretty, pert and elfin.
Come Friday night being Amami night, my sisters wore theirs in bed. They wouldn’t be seen dead is something as frumpy as a hairnet to keep their rollers in position, but a chiffon scarf, styled a la Hilda Ogden, was, to them, acceptable. And this curling-and-covering ritual carried on night after night, until the next hair-washing and setting session – though, unlike the loveable Coro character, they drew up short of actually going out in this get-up.
My own collection must have come from the days when these fancy squares slipped from the head, to make a fashion statement sitting casually on the shoulders. I spent my trendiest years sporting the finest silks, satins, Paisleys, and okay, the odd rayon number, nestling nicely on the cleavage – before cleavages became compulsory – knotted, nattily, to one side, or, John Wayne style, tied at the back, with the point down the front. How rakish was that.
At the start of my dotage, age around fifty, I embraced the shawl, which covers a multitude of bingo wings, Rugby prop-forward shoulders, wrinkled neck, sagging chest, kept the frozen shoulders and rheumatics at bay, and is easier to cart around than a cardi. Okay, I may have moved on to the odd Pashmina, especially those you can pick up, three for ten Euros, on Spanish markets, garish colour compulsory, but the shawls won’t be following those scarves to the charity shop because one of these days, just like headscarves, Vogue will no doubt herald them as the latest fashion accessory. And for once, I’ll be ahead.
Actually, if push came to shove, I’d rather sport a headscarf than a baseball cap. But at my age, it could just be that a Benny bobble beckons.
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