askchapo

Femme people specifically wear scarves specifically because it's hot? Why?

I think women all over the place wear headscarves. Also in colder places though, like think of "babushka". Men wear scarves too but not quite as much. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headscarf

I think headscarves are extremely versatile, expressive garments and just in my personal observations in my context, when worn by women especially, are associated with a variety of bold and highly aesthetic fashion choices. Women wearing headscarves are way over represented among the best dressed people I pass by every day. It is striking.

Aside from that I don't know why it's so popular world wide. Although I kind of wonder why it isn't more popular given how amazing everyone looks. Aside from the associated fashion traditions, wearing a scarf about the face is very flattering on virtually everyone.

I wonder if you might be interested in this book Women's work, the first 20,000 years: women, cloth, and society in early times by Elizabeth Wayland Barber. It was published a long time ago and I don't know how well the academic side of it stood up tho I never found any debunking. But she talks about how textiles, garments etc are key human technologies and I found it a useful way to think about things. Like for example she talks about how in mainstream culture, we think that the key early human technologies are fire and weapons like arrowheads. But points out actually the most important thing humans ever developed was the baby carrier. How far do you think you can get lugging a 1 year old in your arms? You can't learn to walk upright and migrate all over the place without a baby carrier. She traces some old and common traditions in clothes and other textiles. I particularly enjoyed learning about the lozenge: ◊. Once you start noticing the lozenge (especially red lozenges), you can't unsee it everywhere.

I once looked Barber up on youtube and found some more recent conferences she had spoken at, which were really interesting in terms of textile practices. Not just her videos but other people at same events.