Scarves In Paris

I am not certain how I got the impression that I would have some time for myself this trip, and that became even less likely when the after effects of the flight from Miami to Paris sent me to bed after lunch. And it appears that a planned day in Siena will be bumped by the need to pay a visit to Milan later in the week. C'est, as they say, la vie.

It is my favorite city, but the reason for the stop in Paris is to seek out some things for the ASW store before heading to the menswear show in Florence. As it has been these last three years, the weather is gray and 50 degrees (10 C), which is once again too warm for the overcoat I commissioned especially for winter trips to the continent (that is too wrinkled from the suitcase in any event). There is no sign of snow. Most French men are wearing coats to keep off the chill but they are not particularly warm ones. Well over half of them are wearing scarves though, usually knotted in the Parisian fold.

Scarves represent a change for the better from Caillebot's rainy day in Paris illustration and, to my mind, more of us need to emulate the French in this regard. Worthy neck warmers on their own, scarves serve the additional function of covering the necktieless throat, hiding the floppy collar that usually accompanies such efforts. Well, when a man is not wearing a rollneck anyway.

Rollneck wearer that I am on this trip, I brought only one scarf to wear with the navy suit I packed for my business day in the city tomorrow. One of those fringed paisley silk on one side and cashmere on the other jobs, it is about as conspicuous a consumption as a man with any pretense of discretion gets. Plain camel cashmere might have worked just as well, but it would have been less fun.