During a summer full of mesh shoes and raffia shoulder bags, one statement accessory in particular has cut through the noise: the trusty headscarf. But, how exactly did something once worn by Brigitte Bardot and Jackie Kennedy on the beaches of Capri and Saint Tropez suddenly work its way into the summer wardrobes of Hailey Bieber, Beyoncé, and Kendall Jenner?
Well, for starters, the styling trick—basically, either a patterned or brightly colored scarf tied underneath one’s chin—is fairly simple to pull off. But it also evokes a sense of nostalgia, in specific the glamorous oceanfront styles of 1950s and ’60s starlets. And if there’s one thing about celebrity fashion nowadays, vintage references are just as, if not more, en vogue than items that are actually new.
During a recent trip to Mallorca, Spain, a bikini-clad Kendall Jenner used a patterned silk scarf to not only wrap around her head, but also to wear as a teensy mini skirt. Hailey Bieber has made the head scarf a hallmark of her recent style, too, with her most prominent co-sign of the trend coming during her baby shower. She wore a sheer Jacquemus dress with a matching butter yellow head scarf and angular sunglasses. The Rhode founder also presented another iteration of the head scarf at Coachella when she wore a cheetah print muffler on top of a Fila baseball cap.
For the most part, stars have kept their iterations of the head scarf in line with the high-glam, elevated versions worn in decades past. There’s the simplicity of 1950s Audrey Hepburn in, say, the way Elsa Hosk softly wraps a white scarf around her hair while wearing with a linen skirt suit. And the nonchalance of Bardot in the way Jenner turned her head scarf into a beach cover-up.
But as much as fashion girls are nodding to a bygone era, there’s a handful of scarf-clad stars who are hollering “Yoo-Hoo, Boys!” instead.
The Yoo-Hoo brigade kicked off in Paris this spring when Sabrina Carpenter paired a custom Jacquemus swimsuit and skirt with a Bardot-esque head wrap. Beyoncé, while yachting in the Hamptons, had her turn in a white sundress that she decked out with a matching white bandana.
At Cannes, Hunter Schafer brought the trend to the red carpet. Though her custom Prada head accessory could more so be considered as a kerchief—or, a piece of fabric used to cover the hair—rather than the chin-wrapped versions seen elsewhere.
Celebrities are, mostly, wearing their headscarves with some sort of body of water close by—like new-gen model Alex Consani’s metallic cabana moment—but the general public seem to be adopting the style to a variety of locales. If the guests at Copenhagen Fashion Week are anything to go by, it won’t be long until the scarf is only classified as a cold-weather accessory.