SEASON of the SCARF

GENERATIONS of WOMEN have reached for a little SILK SQUARE as an essential ACCESSORY to add POLISH and REFINEMENT. But this spring, the FOULARD gets a little FREAKY.

- BROOKE BOBB

ON A DRIZZLY JULY DAY in Paris, an Olympic-swimming-pool-size silk scarf stretched across the courtyard of Celine's headquarters and billowed softly in the rain. The scarf, with its swirling chain-link-and-ribbon print, functioned as a de facto tent for the editors and buyers and celebrities gathered to take in Michael Rider's debut show as the house's creative director. It would have been easy to write it off as an Instagrammable prop. But as the models came down the runway, it became clear that the silk scarf, or foulard in French, was a harbinger of a new era for Celine.

In both Rider's first collection and his subsequent spring womenswear collection, the foulard emerged as a dominant motif.

Rich primary-hued versions, featuring the house's signature equestrian prints or monogram, were styled peeking out from under the lapels of a coat, cinched and worn loosely around the neck over a blazer, or draped, sashlike, across a shoulder.

More than an accessory, the foulard was used as the lining of a trench, as a patchworked skirt, and as a shirred top.

This was not an isolated foulard fixation. It was the same summer that everyone (from Alexa Chung to Kylie Jenner to Leandra Medine Cohen) seemed to be wearing scarves tied like tiny sarongs over pants and shorts. And then all across the spring runways in every major fashion capital, the scarf popped up in surprising and even shocking new ways. In London, Conner Ives paired a bright-orange longsleeved polo shirt with a bird-printed kelly-green silk scarf skirt. At Hermès, that paragon of French propriety, creative director Nadège Vanhee took the house's signature carré (a square-cut silk scarf) and tucked it into BDSM-style leather harnesses.