Hats Off! The Babushka Head Scarf Is Turning Heads Right Now

When it is hot out, or sometimes when it’s not, I frequently tie up my wilting locks in a printed scarf. Despite the mixed reaction this look has garnered—“What is that thing you’re wearing?” my friend B. asked, incredulous, seeing for the first time the Liberty of London scarf wrapped firmly around my head—I have clung to this style for years. When B. added that he thought the scarf made it seem like I was getting ready to clean the house, not join him for dinner in a fancy bistro, I replied weakly that I thought it gave me a sort of milkmaid mien, that it managed to transform me into a sort of living matryoshka doll. But if I was slightly hurt by his comments, at the moment I am vindicated.

On two major London runways, the babushka has just emerged, unafraid, unembarrassed—and not tied in some clever, jaunty way, but folded in the classic triangle and affixed under the chin. At Mary Katrantzou on Sunday, the head scarves were brightly printed, echoing the Peter Max-ish patterns of the frocks they accompanied; the next day at Christopher Kane, they appeared to be made, unabashedly, of clear plastic.

If you are thinking that despite the catwalk endorsement this accessory still shrieks Mommy’s rain bonnet! Hair-curler coverer! let us examine the historical record: In Britain, at least, this item has a venerable backstory. Does not Tom Courtenay’s girlfriend in Tony Richardson’s The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, the wonderfully named actress Topsy Jane, wear a sheer scarf wrapped loosely around her head? (If you have never seen this 1962 film, you must do so at once.) Didn’t Jean Shrimpton manage to elevate this plebian cloth, decorated with daisies, into the pinnacle of 1960s glamour? And of course the queen herself invariably knots one of these silky things under her royal chin as she takes those snappy corgis out for a damp stroll.

Englishwomen may, for better or worse, now appear indistinguishable from their sisters in any other global capital, but in my imagination there are still legions of British ladies, up from the country for a day in the big city, toasty in their Wellingtons, waxy Balfour jackets flapping over pilly Shetland jumpers, and atop their unruly coiffures, a wonderfully dowdy, dowdily wonderful babushka.

They may think they are emulating their sovereign as they bite into their kedgeree at Richoux on Piccadilly, but at this very moment, they are the very pinnacle of catwalk chic.

 

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