However, I love the thin useless scarf. It’s an existential crisis of a trend—a nonsensical decoration that has people asking “what’s the point?” After all, it’s completely ineffectual. That swath of colorful cotton, polyester, or sometimes wool will never keep a human warm. And yet, they have seared their memory into my mind. I tried to rack my brain for an iconic thin scarf moment. Was it a holiday Old Navy ad, in which a woman in a white turtleneck and thin rainbow scarf dances around in fake snow? Not quite. (Though it sounds plausible.) Instead, I unearthed a mid-aughts Gap commercial with Sarah Jessica Parker. Lo and behold, I saw SJP grooving alongside Lenny Kravitz, who is singing “Lady.” Parker swiveled her hips while wearing a fedora, dark wash flares, and a tie-meets-scarf fished through her hot pink cardigan. Kravitz also wore one. It reminded me of Jimmy Hendrix, who had always worn a scarf during his performances. To his credit, Kravitz has worn slim scarves since his early days as a performer, no matter what era he is in.
Though we tend to think of these accessories as kitschy, they’ve had their chic moments. It appeared on the runways at Chloé in spring 2005. Karolina Kurkova wore a teal iteration with a summery little black dress, while Heather Marks donned a red scarf with a tan silk dress. At Marc by Marc Jacobs for spring 2004, the thin scarf took shape in emerald green, and was worn by Anouck Lepère with a pair of itty-bitty shorts. In fall 2005—among thicker, more useful scarves—the thin useless scarf dotted the Dior Homme runway, worn with tank tops and blazers. At the time, the creative director Hedi Slimane also enjoyed wearing this look.
But perhaps the most iconic thin scarf wearer was Kate Moss. She’s been dedicated to the trend since the mid-2000s, whether she was cavorting around London with the silk things draped around her neck and tied at the chest. In more recent years, she wore one knotted at the neck like some charming Left Bank babe. She’s also worn it as a belt, around a dress, or through her pant belt loops. Moss’s love for this particular accessory made me think of all of the other ones I had seen growing up during the 2000s. The skull-printed Alexander McQueen scarf, for instance, dominated street style images during the mid-aughts and the early 2010s, seen on the likes of the Olsens and even Kim Kardashian.
While the thin useless scarves might feel, to quote Duff, so yesterday, they actually feel ready for a comeback. When I posted to Twitter that I would be writing about this matter, my friend and writer Hannah Tindle chimed in with a pic of herself wearing a saucy black Roberto Cavalli dress with—you guessed it—a glitzy thin useless black scarf tied around her neck. “I was like, ‘You know what this looks needs? A pointless scarf to make it feel very 2005,’” she says. “People mocked Hilary Duff on the red carpet but look who is laughing now tbh.” Tindle also believes the mid-Y2K look is coming back. We have hit the peak of the early 2000s at the moment and have slowly been transitioning into the mid-2000s, and even into the #hipstersleeze era of the 2010s. So that thin useless scarf? Think of it as the connective tissue that will bring us into the next era of trends.
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