Ready or knot

The luxurious silk scarf is a stylish and versatile companion for all occasions, from shoot days to adventures in the Land Rover

- Serena Cross

A PASSION for silk scarves was stitched into my life from an early age. Both my grandmother and my best friend have worked for the most chic of all scarf brands: Hermès. My grandmother was a model in the 1970s and would seemingly glide luxuriously, draped in freebies.

One such was my first scarf: a treasured and beautiful, orange-and-red, equestrian-themed confection. In my eyes, this was not only a scarf but a piece of art. With its distinctive hand-rolled and hand-sewn edge, it whispered elegance. The weight of the Hermès silk is twice that of inferior twills and the pattern is also double-sided, as are the fine scarves sold by Clare Haggas in her Cotswolds boutique.

The Hermès scarf has been made in Lyon since 1937 but the story of the silk scarf goes back much further. It is said that about 5,000 years ago a Chinese empress accidentally dropped a silkworm cocoon into her tea, where it unfurled to leave a shimmering thread. Intrigued, she had a specialist loom created to weave this delicate gossamer and with that broke the dawn of cultivating the silkworm.