By Oliver Harry - Founder and Creative Director, Ghini Como, a luxury silk scarf brand specialising in zero-mile Como silk based in Argegno, Lake Como
Quick facts: celebrities and silk scarves
- Grace Kelly famously used a Hermès silk scarf as a sling for her broken arm in 1956, a photograph that became one of the most reproduced images in fashion history and single-handedly elevated the accessory to the status of a luxury icon
- Audrey Hepburn tied a silk scarf around her hair in Roman Holiday (1953), establishing the headscarf as a mainstream Western fashion accessory in a single scene watched by millions
- Queen Elizabeth II wore silk scarves consistently throughout her public life, most often tied under the chin while on horseback, creating an association between the accessory and a certain kind of unassuming, composed authority that endured for seven decades
- Jacqueline Kennedy wore silk scarves on her head, around her neck, and as belts throughout the early 1960s, documented in photographs that remain among the most studied examples of American style in the twentieth century
- The province of Como has supplied the silk for the world's great fashion houses since the nineteenth century, which means that virtually every silk scarf worn by every major public figure in the twentieth century was produced in the same geographically concentrated district of northern Italy
The women who made the silk scarf iconic: a celebrity history
What do you think of when you hear the words silk scarf? Or, perhaps we should ask, who do you think of? Because the silk scarf is as famous for the people who wear it as the scarves themselves.
Figures like Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Jaqueline Kennedy and even Queen Elizabeth II are synonymous with silk scarves in popular culture, but fascinatingly they all wore scarves sourced from the same location - Lake Como, Italy.
Como has been producing the world's finest silk since the fifteenth century.
By the time Kelly was photographed using a Hermès scarf as a sling for her broken arm in 1959, Como's workshops were already supplying essentially every major luxury house in Europe. Hermès, Chanel, Gucci, Prada - all of them sourced their silk from the same concentrated district of workshops around the lake.
So when you look at those photographs of Kelly, or Hepburn in Roman Holiday, or Kennedy at the America's Cup, or Queen Elizabeth II on horseback with a headscarf tied under her chin - you are, in all likelihood cases, looking at Como silk.
When I first started exploring the idea of creating my own line of Como silk scarves with Ghini Como, I was captivated by the thought that such a small group of family-run silk mills could serve such a powerful sub-section of popular culture.
In this article, we will explore some of the most mesmerising women who made Como silk scarves so popular:
Grace Kelly and the image that changed everything
In 1956, Grace Kelly broke her arm.
Her doctor provided a standard hospital-issue sling, which was hardly befitting of Kelly's glamorous image. Instead, Kelly replaced it with an Hermès silk scarf, turning an injury into an iconic fashion moment.
Unsurprisingly, the photograph of Kelly on the arm of Prince Rainier III, her Hermès scarf visible at her wrist, became one of the most reproduced images in fashion history.
This single image transformed the image of Como silk scarves in the eyes of the watching world. It demonstrated that silk was not only for formal occasions, but incredibly versatile.
It was for hospitals, airports, boats, and cars. It was the thing a woman of taste reached for because it was the simplest and most elegant solution to whatever situation she found herself in.
The scarves Kelly wore were produced from Como silk. Hermès, whose carré became the defining luxury silk scarf of the twentieth century, sourced its silk from the workshops of the Province of Como, a relationship that has changed little in the subsequent decades.
Audrey Hepburn and the Roman Holiday moment
In one of the most iconic films of the 1950s - Roman Holiday - Audrey Hepburn wears a silk scarf, riding through Rome on the back of a Vespa. You will almost certainly have seen the image.
Before that film, the silk headscarf was primarily associated with humble practicality - open-top cars, outdoor occasions, the functional business of keeping hair in place.
After Hepburn wore one on screen, it became indicative of a new form of femininity - embodied so brilliantly by Hepburn - that combined intelligence, ease and a perceived absence of effort.
She wore silk scarves in Roman Holiday, in Breakfast at Tiffany's, in her private life photographed by paparazzi in Rome and Paris, and at her second wedding in 1969, where she tied a white silk scarf around her hair with the same effortlessness that characterised her entire aesthetic.
What distinguished Hepburn's approach from Kelly's was its modernity.
Whereas Kelly's silk scarves communicated authority, Hepburn's communicated curiosity and movement. She made the scarf feel young, which is the specific reason it survived the 1960s intact and emerged on the other side still relevant.
Jacqueline Kennedy and the American interpretation
Jacqueline Kennedy understood the silk scarf as a tool with multiple applications rather than a single accessory with one correct use, and she demonstrated this publicly throughout the early 1960s in photographs that reached every corner of the world simultaneously.
She wore silk scarves over her hair, photographed in 1962 watching the America's Cup from a boat. She wore them at her neck, in photographs from state visits and White House events. She wore them as belts, threaded through the loops of her trademark cigarette trousers in a way that the fashion press documented with the seriousness usually reserved for haute couture.
Each application was slightly different from the last, and each demonstrated the same point: the silk scarf is the most versatile single accessory in a wardrobe, and someone who understands it can use it in ways that most people would not think to try.
Kennedy's influence on how American women dressed cannot be overstated, and her consistent, varied use of silk scarves throughout the most photographed years of her public life is one of the reasons the accessory retained its cultural relevance through a decade that otherwise dismantled most of what had come before.
Queen Elizabeth II and seventy years of consistency
Queen Elizabeth II was synonymous with Como silk scarves for over seventy years of public life.
Whether she was photographed in the 1950s or the 2010s, if Queen Elizabeth was off-duty or at an event in the countryside then chances are she was sporting a silk scarf - often sourced from Lake Como.
It is no coincidence that, like Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly, Queen Elizabeth was one of the most elegant and sophisticated women of the 20th Century, able to reflect their authority in their wardrobes with a lightness of touch. Her collection of Como silk scarves were intrinsic to this image of effortless and casual elegance.
Sophia Loren, Brigitte Bardot and the Italian and French interpretation
Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot approached silk scarf styling from the same starting point - the Mediterranean summer, the open-top car, the convertible problem of hair in wind - and created wildly different results.
Loren wore hers with a maximum of physical presence, knotted at the throat in ways that emphasised rather than concealed, the scarf functioning as a frame for the wearer rather than a statement on its own.
Bardot wore hers with an apparent carelessness that was, in the way of all great French dressing, entirely calculated, the scarf half-undone or tied in a manner that suggested she had more important things to think about than how she looked.
Both interpretations were unmistakably Italian and French in character, and both were more than likely produced from Como silk.
The modern continuation
The silk scarf's association with celebrity did not end in the 1960s. It evolved.
Kendall Jenner ties one around her hair in a way that references Hepburn without quite quoting her. Bella Hadid wears one at the neck in photographs that look like they were taken in 1965 and were taken last Tuesday.
Dua Lipa has been photographed in the under-chin headscarf that Grace Kelly made famous, worn with the same apparent ease and to the same photographic effect.
The common thread across seven decades of celebrity silk scarf dressing is not the brand, the colourway, or the styling method. It is the material itself - mulberry silk twill, produced in the Province of Como, printed and finished in the workshops that have occupied the same district since the nineteenth century.
Oliver Harry is the founder of Ghini Como, a luxury silk scarf brand based in Como, Italy. He lives in Argegno on the western shore of Lake Como.
