Have You Noticed the Burberry Check Scarf Is Everywhere?
You cannot unsee the classic!
I was at the Burberry show in London this past season. I noticed that London is BURSTING with the Check scarf but so is New York…and it’s kind of everywhere. I got inspired and waxed poetic about the piece.
The Burberry Check scarf is one of those pieces that I consider as having a “farmer’s market effect.” Have you ever had a night of debauchery and then you go to the farmer’s market the next morning, start sniffing organic apples hailing from some yadiyada upstate orchard, and then suddenly feel presentable? (Basically, have you ever stepped foot in Park Slope? There are some real freaks fondling the fruits there in the early AM). Each sniff of an apple washes away anything foul that you were up to the night before and suddenly, you become a respectable member of society. The same sentiment applies to the British house’s scarf. You could have been guzzling pints at the pub the night before; had a sad orgy—and that’s fine. Throw on a Burberry scarf and you instantly look like a polite uniformed British school boy skipping around London; maybe some Lady in a gloriously dilapidated countryside home, taking her foggy morning gallop on a horse, the natty scarf fluttering behind her. The piece excuses bad manners, runny eyeliner, and any of last night’s stench.
While the scarf has surely always existed, it was front-and-center on the Burberry runway itself this past season. (The accessory has also snuggly cameoed in campaigns since Daniel Lee has taken the helm.) For fall 2024, there was the classic grandma styling, tucked under the chin as if the wearer is perpetually en route to church and, of course, the standard wrapped-around-the-neck way. The scarf also segued into the actual fabric of the clothes. Lily Cole’s jacket had a blazing red scarf lining inside of a heavy-duty coat (perfect, for, like, fox hunting in Yorkshire, or bracing the cold for a morning bodega run in New York). Scarf fringe became the hem of a delicious oatmeal wool dress on Lily Donaldson.
In the audience, guests threw scarves over their heads like hunched Slavic women while Lil Yachty fully wrapped his skull in a scarf; bandage-tight. I spotted Beka Gvishiani of Style Not Com who had his own scarf elegantly tucked underneath his peacoat like a darling gentleman. The Georgia native told me that he was obsessed with Burberry as a kid and had bought the scarf from eBay years ago.
So why does the scarf and its check have that elevation effect? The automatic feeling of refinement perhaps comes from the idea that through a WASPified Western lens, British culture can feel manicured by default thanks to, like, the Royal Family and down-to-the-inch rules about curtsying, which seeps into British culture as a whole. Something like tartan, which resembles check, is a storied, centuries-old part of the manners-minded British world, tapping into lineages and clans.
With the royals and with British culture, there are naturally battles with classism, and the Burberry check has played a part in some of those stories. (Writer Daniel Rodgers has a great piece on the Burberry check linked with British classism for Dazed.) Roberto Menichetti, who became Burberry creative director in 1998, focused on fabric and weaves while subtly experimenting with the check. In 2001, Christopher Bailey joined Burberry, also tweaking the check. The check didn’t feel overt, except for maybe Stella Tennant in a check coat in 1999 campaign, or Kate Moss in a check bikini the year after. Though, by the early maximalist ‘00s, Burberry seemed to be battling check woes thanks to football hooligans who wore it as baseball caps and a searing image of troubled soap opera star Danniella Westbook who stepped out head-to-toe in the check—with her check-clad toddler included!—that became volcanic tabloid fodder. Note: But even before the Westbrook-Burb-gate, Burberry had already began buying back rogue licenses and making strides to create “check under cover”.
Still, the brand’s check scarf has stood the test of time, remaining a staple for the house. And why not? According to the site it is “woven on traditional looms at a 200-year-old Scottish mill” and “washed in local spring water”. The piece, which typically ranges from $550 (thick wool) to $590 (cashmere), is a pop of English regality that has been translated into the American version of polished prep.
While searching for vintage iterations of the scarf, I’ve also been looking through old Burberry ads. (Or rather, Burberrys—the brand had the “s” until 1999). The campaigns are a visual chalice of Dubonnet and gin. There’s Burberry out in the Oxfordshire wild; Burberry designated for light outdoor activities; Burberry made for, like, shooting clay ducks. It’s Burberry as founder Thomas Burberry probably imagined it when he created the brand’s water-resistant gabardine trench in 1879.
In one of the ads, there’s a great image of Lord Lichfield and Lady Mary Annunziata Asquith from 1982 somewhere in the grassy fields of England, posing in their trenches, gazing out into the lush abyss. The scarf is the woolen version of being knighted, as if the wearer has been anointed by the prim check. Fast forward to 1997, the same year that the company tapped visionary Rose Marie Bravo as CEO, the scarf was now casually wrapped around the model’s neck that she wore with a plain moss green blazer. Full-on posh or a minimalist peekaboo? Pick your check poison!
In London, the check is everywhere—it’s like Big Ben, the old Queen emblazoned on a pound, or some jolly pub. Perhaps the design isn’t around in a logomaniafied Westbrook way on the sidewalks, but the check creeps through in a smart manner, like the lining of the jacket, flashing from the inside of a collar, or in my favorite form, the classic check scarf, which is like an appendage for some Londoners. In the United States, I had always associated the scarf with Blair Waldorf types; someone who puts their hair in banana curls while the scarf pokes out from their tan peacoat at a Murray Hill brunch. In London, those stiff connotations are fiercely waning. Makeup artist Nicky Harrington, 23, who was born and bred in London, told me that the scarf had been associated with nobles and lords and Kensington and Chelsea but now the piece has a different reputation as younger crowds experiment with it. “My friend has one of her mums old Burberry silk scarf that she has worn before as a top and it’s a slay,” she says. “It can be done.”
The fact that the check is so classic means that it has always been ripe for the remixed picking; an accessory that is perpetually begging to be converted, reinterpreted, and molded into anyone’s wildest dreams. In 1994, around the boom of grunge, there was a rebrand of Burberry, intended to make the classic English house appeal to a younger crowd. Burberry churned out slick shift dresses and pint-sized kilts in the check, enlisting a leggy Christy Turlington in a check mini skirt. There’s a great quote in the 1994 April issue of Vogue in which Edward Enninful, who at the time was the fashion editor at I-d, said that the look of the year is “hybrid of rock and classics. Nonconformists will interpret the uniforms of conformity in their own radical way.” Let’s not forget how the outspoken Brits love to inject a transgressive bite into plaid or tartan: Vivienne Westwood created her own versions, making organ-squishing corsets using tartan, while the epically foul mannered Sid Vicious wore suits in the patterned cloth.
Back to Enninful’s quote. Those heritage pieces have the most room to be freaked with, and are a testament to how far a wearer can push the boundaries of an item. There is a creative liberties joy in tabula rasa pieces that we can build with and ultimately subvert. Maybe that is a Tory Burch Reva flat or a Chanel Double Flap bag. Maybe it is a Sperry Top-Sider. Maybe it is a Burberry Check scarf—and styling it in our own ways is the best way to redefine tradition and make it our own.
Ultimately, the scarf is a great wardrobe piece that is of stellar quality. (I have a vintage one!) I can take that same scarf out of the splendid manor (or out of Murray Hill) and tuck it under a throat-grazing collar of a spleen-warping leather jacket that I’ve been wearing. Maybe put it over my head as I stomp through SoHo in a hulking biker jacket. My workspace friend Kareem Sabri who works in tech wore his father’s own green plaid Burberry scarf to work with a black peacoat after years of resisting it because, well, everyone had one. “But it was popular for a reason!” he told me. In London, I saw a student in a hulking ‘60s-era shearling jacket, hurrying down the street with a scarf over her head. I was watching a video with John Galliano at a Vogue World press conference at the Paris Ritz. The same man who is responsible for the most talked-about fashion show we’ve seen in years, was perched in a booth wearing one of these Burberry Check scarves over his shoulders, like some sort of eccentric ponytailed English Lord. I loved his teatime cosplay. Turns out making tradition our own is the best look of all.
Watch NEVERWORNS…
Please see Lohan at the end of the ghastly Irish Wish in full Burb.
Not the fruit fondling freaks 💀