How to wear your Pashmina!
How to Wear a Pashmina?
If you love colorful scarfs, even in the summer season, you have to add a pashmina into your wardrobe. Perfect for winter, and very chic for the summer, the pashmina can be easily used in various outfits. Discover, in the following paragraphs, how to integrate it in different looks.
Woven sheer wraps, Olivia Graham Cashmere
The Kashmir Valley population was famous for weaving shawls. Goats in Central Asia and the Himalayas, who lived more than 4,500m above sea level, provided the wool to create these beautiful garments. Cashmere wool was one of the biggest luxury goods transported by road into the Roman Empire, but in the 16th century, the industry really grew, during the reign of the Mughal Emperor Akbar. Mostly worn by men, pashmina shawls where once considered a privilege and could only be worn by kings.
Because pashminas are soft and available in a variety of colors, they can be worn in many ways, depending on the style and imagination of the wearer. The French have always been known for their stylish ways, and even now in 2015, many of us still wear our wraps the same way as they did in the 18th Century! Tied around the neck, flowing over the shoulders/arms, or wrapped snuggly around us for the cooler occasions!
A lithograph plate showing a variety of ways of wearing shawls in early 19th-century France (ca. 1802-1814); redrawn from various early 19th-century sources by Durin for Albert Charles Auguste Racinet's Le Costume Historique (1888)
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Wear it as a scarf
Olivia Graham Cashmere
The most simple and convenient option is to wear the pashmina as a scarf. Its delicate nature and softness against the skin along with it's size allows you the wearer to wrap it several times around your neck .
Wear it as a shawl
Of course, the pashmina can be used as a shawl to protect yourself from the cold on cool summer nights. Casually thrown over the shoulders for formal occasions, weddings, visits to the Sydney Opera House (with its very cool air conditioning, as one of our wrap clients advised!). Pin it with a brooch for a feminine touch.
You can also drape your wrap casually over troublesome areas such as hips/tummy when posing for photos! If Empress Josephine can do it, why can’t we?
Portrait of the Empress Josephine wearing a Kashmiri Shawl - 1805 by Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, Oil on Canvas at Musée du Louvre, Paris, France
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