This is great advice from
@Belphoebe. H really makes scarves for everyone, so it is good to be patient and wait for "your" scarf to turn up. Collecting should be fun, and when you know what suits you best, you might decide to create a cohesive collection based on a certain color, or theme (sea life, exotic gardens, equestrian, birds, vehicles, FSH, etc.), or possibly a particular designer. Until you discover what you love most or choose a direction, you might feel like you're chasing your tail a little.
Or end up with a collection that doesn't feel as personal as you might like.
Edit: Another argument for trying them on, as
@Genie27 brilliantly mentioned in another thread, they look quite a bit different flat than they do tied. I returned a Zebra Pegasus mousseline recently because, though I loved it flat, I just couldn't make the colors work for me when it was tied.
Agree with all of this: patience; developing a collection really shaped by your taste and not everybody else's pretty things. And I still get myself in trouble falling in love with flat designs and forgetting how much they can change when tied.
I like OP's choice of the word "path," and it made me wonder whether others started with new or vintage, and when they might have crossed over.
Here are the stages in my own path, if you want to see what chasing one's tail might look like:
- Every woman should own one Hermes scarf.
- Wait, I meant, one each of a few different formats.
- OK, I can have more than one scarf per format, but definitely no repeat patterns.
- In the same format.
- Unless I bought a cw that doesn't work for me and I need a do-over.
- And Ex Libris and Brides de Gala totally don't count.*
- Neither does L'Art d'Ecrire.
- Oh, what the heck SO MANY PRETTY THINGS WHEEEEEE
- Oops.
- Uh-oh.
- Hmm. What have we learned here?
- Evolving quest to build on strengths, repair past mistakes, and avoid future ones; make sure my joy, storage space, and budget are cooperating with each other
* I branched out to older scarves at stage 6. Didn't buy any fakes, but made other mistakes. Let's just say, if you are thinking, "But maybe that color looks better on me than I think, and maybe I could fold it to hide that part of the scarf anyway," navigate away from the page immediately, no matter how good a deal it is.
When you are ready to collect older scarves,
@marietouchet and
@ksuromax (who just scored an awesome grail, btw) had a useful exchange recently:
https://forum.purseblog.com/threads/your-grail-scarf.121359/page-386#post-31469593
I should have mentioned reading not only the authentication archives but also the Scarf ID and Scarf Reference archives. They will teach you about scarves, good ways to do your research -- and, importantly, what to look for in a reseller.
Shout-out to good resellers! Collecting vintage scarves would not be possible without them. While even the best get fooled sometimes (hence the authentication step), there are best practices the trustworthy ones follow, and they work hard to earn buyer trust. Seek them out -- or at the very least, learn how to avoid obviously bad ones.
And as
@ms.kim says, grail hunting is fun! As you probably know, that Your Grail Scarf thread is not only for the uber grails but also for whatever scarf you yourself consider a grail. Everybody is ready to share in your joy acquiring whatever it is you've been hunting for. (Though if you do saunter in with that blue Turandot, there will be extra ooohs and ahhhhs.)
TL; DR: Take the time to figure out what works best for you; do your homework before you collect the old; find balance; enjoy the hunt as well as the wearing!
(Thanks for the likes, everybody. Sorry for the huge posts recently. They'll end soon. Gotta get it out of my system before work gets crazy.)
