Thank you, and yes, gotta love L'arte d'ecrire. The vanilla CW is my second-most complimented scarf (gets many more compliments than the black one, interestingly.)
I share many of the preferences and practices you describe, including the supporting-the-arts rationalization and regretting that the simpler designs give me less to work with on that front. But the reduced opportunity to rationalize hasn't stopped me from acquiring them yet.
Love thinking about this list, thank you. I have only minimal experience collecting, but lots of experience thinking and typing, so I'll weigh in anyway.
List item #4 is me all over, and I wish I'd figured it out a lot sooner. But I cut myself some slack: I had never even heard the phrase "contrast hem" before I started this ride. I'm tickled to see it as somebody else's rule too: I thought I was all special and everything.
I too have a no-more-big-borders rule, for different but related reasons. It turns out there are very few ways I can tie a large-bordered 90 that do show the details but don't draw the viewer's eye to places I'd rather it not go. (All cowboy knots look bad on me unless they're under a jacket, so I have my own rule that says, "If it needs a cowboy knot, it's not for you.")
My personal list of things I wish someone had told me (or reminded me of) when I started is long, but here are two.
1. Remember that you are not Iris Apfel. Or Christine Lagarde or Lupita Nyong'o or MaiTai. What they do will not necessarily (and, in my case, usually won't) work for you . . .
2. . . . But that can be a good thing! I was drawn to the noir-and-argent Vif Argent for a long time, but I knew
MaiTai's elegant styling that looks so spare and polka-dot-like wouldn't be right on me, so I hesitated. I finally took the plunge and realized that when I tie it to show off more of the molten silver, all that scarf bling around my neck gives me rush, makes me feel less MaiTai-wannabe and more
this.
I hope more people will post guidelines of their own that they use for themselves.