I love scarves. I have a closetful of them. My wife is always stealing mine and I'm always stealing hers. But chances are if I'm out on the street I've got something around me neck. It might even be hot out but you never know when you're going to have AC blowing on your neck or when you might need a disguise. You can't have too many scarves (which is not to say they can't be ugly) but few accessories are more useful. A scarf can be too small, if you can't get it around your neck say, but it can't really be too big. If it's big you can use it to put your arm in a sling if you dislocate your shoulder taking on two or three combatants at once, or you can throw it over your girl's lap if she's in short shots or a mini and night falls eliciting gooseflesh, or you can wear it like a babushka if you're riding a camel through a place where your complexion might get you shot at, or you can wrap it into a full turban.

I was recently given a new scarf by my friend Kate Simon, the great photographer, featuring a triptych of one of her portraits of the eminent author William S. Burroughs and it became an instant favorite. It was designed by Ross Menuez and it features Kate's sequence of Bill drawing his weapon. Mine is black and gray, but it is also available in yellow or orange at Barneys New York in Manhattan or L.A.. I like the way Mr. Menuez's series uses photography. Tartans are technology, and so is this, but newer. Here's to menswear with content. It's art but it's cashmere and keeps your neck nice.

Here are some others I like, one featuring an apartment building—I thought it was Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation but it's actually public housing in Detroit—another featuring a bamboo grove in Kamakura, Japan, and another with Intergalactic Storm Trooper lookalike riot police in Strasbourg defending a G8 meeting. These look very discreet on, but when unfurled they are wonderfully painterly and possibly symbolic.


Oscar Wilde said "Be a work of art or wear one." I'd say "Be a work of art and wear one." By the way, here's Kate Simon on the bus with Jah Bob back in the day.