All You Need Is a Sexy Summer Shawl
All You Need Is a Sexy Summer Shawl
A deep dive into the '90s pashmina craze to shawls for weddings; with jeans and a T-shirt...anyways, I'm ready for the new era of the piece.
Today on #NEVERWORNS, I’m talking about the endless allure of the shawl. It might be the most erotic thing that many of us already have in our wardrobe. As always, subscribe and watch #NEVERWORNS, especially this freak-friendly episode with James Veloria. PS. Shop the #NEVERWORNS storefront at eBay. New episode dropping soon.
Give me a shawl, a pashmina, something with a fringe that can cover my shoulders. This piece of fabric is a saving grace that trumps any dowdy cardigan. I witnessed the power of the shawl myself this past weekend: I was at a wedding and not one but two of my friends were wearing shawls. One in particular that stood out was my friend’s paisley print cream vintage Dior shawl that her mom bought somewhere for nothing. My bodacious babe of a friend ended up putting it over her clingy, strappy floral print dress. The touch provided just enough coverage. And I can’t lie, I was jealous as I sweat through the “I do” portions of the nuptials in a shiva-ready black cashmere cardigan feeling too covered, and yet, when I eventually would take it off intermittently throughout the night, I would feel not covered at all.
Be it cotton, silk, satin, lace, or pashmina—the shawl is such a classic ‘90s look that infiltrated prom pictures, red carpets, and the runway. A shawl for all—and for every occasion! There’s a great tear in the Talking Fashion section of the September 1998 issue of Vogue that shows the pure power of the shawl: A ton of socialites posing and flexing their arms—what were they doing back then to tone, yoga?—in strappy dresses with the shawls looped through the bends of their elbows or balanced on their shoulders.
There are so many stellar shawl moments in ‘90s and early ‘00s fashion. There was Olatz Schnabel's cream piano shawl she wore to her wedding in 2001. Gwyneth Paltrow’s floss-thin version wrapped around her fists to match her pink taffeta Ralph Lauren dress at the 1999 Academy Awards. Halle Berry wearing an old Hollywood-style matching white shawl with a strapless number to a Die Another Day premiere in London in 2002.
But when I brought up the greatness of the shawl in my group chat, my friends had conflicting memories. My friend and former colleague Brooke Bobb noted that whenever she left the house as a teen, her mother would say “Do you want a wrap?”, which Bobb adds, “Like she was horrified at me going out in a dress with no cover-up!” It’s almost as if you wear the shawl to cloak yourself when mommy and daddy are around and then voila, once you leave home to enter the big bad world, you fling the shawl aside and show some skin.
And that is the allure in the shawl! If you’re out, that shawl can just—oops!—slink down the arm to show a little shoulder—aka the cleavage of the arm. The piece allows for the art of the reveal—and that art of reveal can be toyed with however the wearer pleases. It can be coy. It can be chaste. After all, let’s not forget that there’s something old-world sexy about the shawl. I always think of the shawl as something to cover your head or shoulders before you go into a holy place but then again, throw it over the shoulder on a skimpy number, and the piece becomes subversive; almost erotic, transformed from the shroud of a wailing prefica to a swathe of fluttering fabric on a Rome bombshell who is spilling out of her dress. Look at the 1998 fall Dolce & Gabbana show where there is a hoard of models sauntering around in the clingiest of dresses—so tight I imagine a seam will burst if they bend—and what are they loosely bound in? Shawls! As if they are going to cross themselves at church only to later drag on a thin cigarette at the club right after.
I’ve always loved Dolce’s mimed modesty with the shawl; it’s Madonna-whore kitsch with a side of fringe. But that was when the brand was the best…in its early days when Dolce’s seduction hinged on tapping into the forbidden sensuality of a pious bombshell. And the best thing about those Dolce shawls? Well, you can practically touch the sheen of those things through the screen.
So how did the moment of the late ‘90s, early ‘00s shawl come to be? To understand the shawl is to understand the pashmina craze of the ‘90s. The baby-soft pashmina was a relatively low-cost answer to the blackmarket shahtoosh, which is created from the Tibetan chiru antelope, an animal that has been on the endangered species list since 1979. The shahtoosh pieces, which sometimes fetched upwards of $15,000 and were once a dowry piece in Tibet, were believed to be so fine that they could be pulled through a wedding band. In the mid-‘90s, cocooned socialites were being busted left and right for their illegal shahtooshes, including Nan Kempner who was subpoenaed after she had allegedly bought the shawls at a charity function.
As the shahtoosh became passe, there was The Great Pashmina Lobby. The fashion-verse heralded the pashmina as the new hot thing. (Shalom Harlow unofficially fronted this campaign and told The Los Angeles Times that people should consider the pashmina in lieu of the shahtoosh.) In Vogue, there were trend articles dedicated to the pashmina, with titles like “It’s a Wrap” or pictures of the scarves in a “What To Wear To a Wedding” story. Some time after, the pashmina filtered into the general lexicon, cameo’ing on cable and beyond. In Sex and The City episode “My Motherboard, My Self” (2001), Carrie Bradshaw swaddles her busted laptop in a purple pashmina to bring it to a computer repair store, saying, “Two meltdowns later, we rushed my ‘98 laptop, in my ‘99 pashmina, to Tekserve.” On the Friends episode, “The One with Rachel’s Sister” (2000), Ross shows off a similar pashmina purchase that he snuggles to his cheek, exclaiming, “I love these babies.”
A few seasons later in the fashion-verse, there was the lighter shawl moment, which allowed for more creative liberty in designs. I get it: The pashmina is soft but it’s for the most part only a solid hue, so there’s only so much you can do with it. An article in The New York Times from 1999 quoted store owner Liz Lange saying, “I’m so over plain pashmina because it’s everywhere,” who was selling cashmere shawls trimmed with bird feathers. In the November 1999 issue of Vogue in Talking Fashion, the event-hopping babes—Giselle Bündchen, Michelle Hicks—were out again, now in intricately embroidered semi-sheer shawls or grandma-style crocheted iterations that they wore with low-slung jeans and slip skirts. “It’s confirmed. The fashion crowd is throwing in their pashminas. They’re opting instead for shawls or ponchos, mostly knitted, some in colorful prints,” read a snippet. (Side note, at the end, the author writes: “These exotic finds need to be hunted down in vintage stores or, even better, bought in faraway places.” This statement, albeit crudely in a dated way, nails the idea that people want a colorful story to go with their colorful clothes.)
Ultimately, I really love seeing the shawl casually worn. That’s where the real art of the shawl comes through. I chalk this whole essence up to this great portrait from the aforementioned November 1999 issue of Vogue of the photographer Elinor Carucci as a 20-something in New York City wearing black lace shawl—her mother’s, according to the caption—with a white ballerina-neck T-shirt by Kookaï. There is a striking dichotomy of a storied matrilineal shawl with, like, an elevated mall brand T-shirt. It’s such a casual, breezy look but it’s layered down to a spiritual sense. After I saw the photo, I looked up Carucci because there was a flicker of something about her reflected in that old-world, new-world choice and I just had to know more—hey, there’s that “everyday aspirational” concept I’ve been drumming on about! And guess what? From that shawl, I found out that Carucci is an incredible photographer with several books, one of which I bought about her early career as a belly dancer during the hazy, cab-hailing days of New York. Now, I’m left here wondering, just where has her shawl been?
Now, more shawls below!
Co-sign!! Flirty and useful and stylish and a little bit mysterious. And love them over a jacket too, a little bonus accessory for your outerwear in the key of doily. I have a vintage aqua knit balmain (but is it really? Not sure, don’t really care) shawl with twisted fringe that comes with me in nearly every suitcase I ever pack. I love her.
Those Vogue tears make me realize how much teenaged me CLOSE READ every issue. Every time I see something from Vogue circa 1996-2002 a little beeper goes off in my memory nodes like yeah I remember this because I probably read it 3 times, VERY CLOSELY.
Re shawls. Someone mentioned South Asia because what sticks in my mind also are elder dudes in winter with kind of giant tan and khaki colored beasts with maybe red or white detailing, sumptuous!