A safe addiction - Liberty scarves

Is it scarves or scarfs? No matter, the important thing is that we all agree that scarves are wonderful, wonderful inventions. Is there anything as good when it's cold and raining and miserable outside than wrapping yourself in a giant knitted cashemre scarf of amazingness? Well, probably, yes, but still it's up there with some of the better things in life.
But despite the cold edge to the air, it's not quite the time for giant cashmere scarves that would make you faint from heat exhaustion on the tube. No, it's still just about the right time for floaty strips of chiffon, squares of silk and triangles of bightly coloured cotton.
An no-where offers a better selection than Liberty's scarf room which has just relaunched in the hallowed dark wood panelled central hall of one of the UK's best shops.
I had a sneak peak on Thursday and it's rather glorious, with styling stations to teach us lesser mortals how to stop a stupidly expensive square of silk sticking to your lipstick or flying off in the wind. After all  these scarves, although spectacularly beautiful, do tend to be tricky to wear.
They have a nasty tendency to fall off at innappropriate times, which means you are constantly tugging at them. You knot one around your neck to stop it flying away and it suddenly tightens and now you're being strangled, which really is too much suffering even for fashion.
Which is why it seems especially magnanimous of Liberty to take its expertise, or rather those of its chief scarf tier Lauranne, to the masses via the very modern medium of youtube with these rather charming videos.











The scarf is definitely having a moment. Hermes launched a useful resource a few weeks ago now in the shape of its own scarf campaign site called Jaime Mon Carre, or I Love My Scarf. It also has a number of tutorials organised to reflect the styles of women living in some of the worlds most stylish cities - London, New York, Paris and Tokyo (hah Milan, you are too boring for us). Those damn French do still manage to outshine the rest of us though.

Image via Living Dolls because I can't get the site to work on my laptop to take a screen grab for some reason

Neither the Liberty videos or the Hermes site are especially new, but they've both merited repeated viewings from me over the last three weeks or so.
The result is that I want even more scarves than the suitcase full I already own (in my defense it's a very, very small vintage vanity case) and will be wiling away a number of hours stroking hideously expensive ones that I could never in a million years afford in the new Liberty scarf room just in case you were wondering where you could find me.