Men's Scarves & History - Wear A Scarf With Confidence - Male Scarf Wearing Advice
Hi!
I'm Antonio Centeno, the founder of Real Men Real Style.
Today, I'm going to be talking about the history of men's scarves.
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Sorry, I've done this introduction almost a couple hundred times now.
You guys should be able to memorize exactly what I'm saying here.
Okay, so I've already talked about why to wear a men's scarf and I've talked about the
functionality and the flair.
Now, I'm going to be talking about the history after this article or after this video, by
the way.
I'm also going to be talking about how to choose a men's scarf and we're also going
to get into various ways to tie a scarf.
Okay, so let's talk about the history and why is even this important.
I want to hit this head on because I think a lot of guys, whenever they put on a scarf
or they look to wear a scarf, they feel that in some ways, it makes them less of a man.
I don't know what point it got hijacked and it is believed now that only metrosexuals
wear this or if you're wearing a scarf that you're sending some type of signal.
That's a bunch of BS because I'll just tell you from my experience -- if you look at pictures
of World War II, desert warfare, right now look at desert warfare and you'll notice that
any guy manning a machine gun and he's exposed himself to the air, to those desert winds,
he has a scarf on and there's a reason he has a scarf on because it's functional, because
it works, and because history has shown that it's just something that makes sense for a
man to protect his neck whether it'd be from the cold, where it'd be from any type of element,
and whether it'd be from sand.
Just look to those types of guys and if they're wearing it, I think that if it's cold outside
and if you have a functional reason to wear a scarf, then do it.
And then it has the added benefit that it does bring a bit of fashion in.
Let's talk about the history.
Who were the men that before us had been wearing scarves?
Well, we can go back over 2000 years ago and go back to Ancient China.
In fact, if you look at the terracotta soldiers that were buried with Emperor Qin Shi Huang
-- and for you Chinese guys out there, I apologize if I just butchered the name of the first
emperor of unified China.
In any case, if you go look at his burial ground which you can go look at these soldiers
and they're made out of stone, they are wearing scarves and it signified rank.
If you think about it, a simple scarf -- now, this one doesn’t signify any rank.
It just got a check pattern in it, but it has a very stark contrast, easy to see, and
depending on the color, depending on the material -- because as you may know, back in ancient
China and even a few hundred years ago, fabrics like silk were protected.
And if you had a scarf made of silk that you wore around the neck, you wore around the
waist, it signified meaning.
Nowadays, we've got rank insignia, but that's pretty easy to have because we can mass manufacture
them, but if you think about a time period when all clothing was handmade, a simple scarf
of the right color made from the right fabric is a great way to signify rank and that's
what it was used for.
Now, let's go forward a few hundred years.
We see it pop up over in Rome, so it was part of the sudarium and it was a normal part of
a higher standing gentleman's wardrobe, so you didn’t see the guys working out in the
fields wearing this stuff.
This was mostly for senators and in fact, Emperor Nero.
If you look on some of the coins, he is depicted as wearing a scarf around his neck and it's
something which did signify class.
It didn’t have the same rank that we saw over in China, but it still signified where
a person was at in society.
Okay, let's go forward a bit and look at the Croatian military.
I think it was Louis XIII and this was around 1636 when the Croats really impressed with
their fashion sense and they wore these scarves around them.
It was a bright color and it was part of their uniform and he was really taken by this.
It then became part of French fashion.
You started seeing people pull this stuff in and for the next couple of hundred years,
scarves were a huge part of French fashion.
Now, let's go to Victorian England and we saw Queen Victoria.
She loved scarves.
She loved these men's and women's scarves, so in her court, you saw this.
And again, this is where it signifies the class of the person.
You didn’t see the common man so much wearing the scarf, but you saw the upper cross and
again, they were made from very high-end, intricately woven materials.
Again, it signified that this person was of a certain social standing.
We started seeing scarves become more common in the last 100 years.
Now that we've manufactured it, it's much easier with materials like silk and wool.
When it comes down to it, they've very functional.
World War I, when men were fighting in cold, you started seeing scarves issued and they
were worn and they worked well to keep men warm and it protected them from the elements.
Aviation, think of Snoopy, imagine Snoopy riding on his dog house and he's fighting
the Red Baron.
What does he have on?
He's got on his goggles.
He's got on a scarf.
The scarf blowing in the wind, a very iconic look that popped up during World War I in
aviation with the guy out there just exposing himself to the elements.
Those of us that have flown know that temperature drops a lot as you get up that high.
It could be 90 degrees on the ground, but when you get up there at a higher altitude,
all of a sudden, it's going to drop until 40 or 30 and below.
Okay, so that is a quick summary.
Nowadays, scarves, again, they've kind of gone in and out of fashion.
I don't follow fashion.
What I say, follow function.
Find a reason to wear a scarf if the temperature, if the elements call for it, and then the
fashion is secondary.
Unless you're really style savvy, then I guess you can try to pull it off with even a t-shirt,
but I wouldn't recommend it.
This has been Antonio Centeno with Real Men Real Style.
Next, I'm going to be talking about how to choose a scarf for a man.
I'm going to be giving I think seven great tips.
I will see you in the next video or the comments if you've got something to add down below.
All right.