Skintight pants, frothy, bell-sleeved white blouse, boots, multiple rings and sailor accessories – last we checked, all of these have been making their way down runways lately.
Even hipsters have been trotting out to clubs decked out in second-skin pants, white tees stylishly torn and beat up and boots scuffed to dramatic effect. And, like Justin Timberlake’s stylist, they’ve been looping a bandanna around their throats. Not exactly pirate gear, but it’s raffish nonetheless.
Those hoping to hop on the sea-roving look need look no further than the scarf rack. If exaggerated proportions aren’t quite to your taste – or to your boss’ dress code – than a natty scarf can provide the best accent.
Designer Nono Palmos created luxuriously hand-woven scarves made of the finest Philippine fabrics. The designer commissions women in the province, experts in the art of weaving indigenous natural fibers, to fabricate lengths of cloth of silky, almost gossamer-light quality.
Working with locally-produced materials ensures a quality most China-made fabrics cannot compete with. Palmos experimented with different fibers to create various combinations of texture and density. Hablon, a cotton-based fiber, is the most common. Used in olden times by datus, the material can easily take on alternate qualities, based on the weaving process. The designer can manipulate the process to create light-as-air and supple scarves to heavier, flashier, almost metallic permutations.
Piña bulak, its name coined from the tufts of cotton that float above the thin weave, is part cotton, part pineapple. Palmos designed the weave, creating a random pattern of knots on stripes in shades ranging from the lightest lavender to the darkest plum.
Not to be confused with the former, piña lambo is the tropical fabric counterpart to wool. A combination of two kinds of silk on a pineapple-thread base, the material can even be used as a base for a jacket.
Palmos also makes use of salinghabi, double-weave dupione or pineapple and silk, which feels crisp to the touch. Lightly wrapped around the neck, a salinghabi scarf is the perfect accoutrement to a T-shirt and jeans.
If the thought of taking on the appearance of a buccaneer isn’t to your taste, then look to the next best thing: seafaring celebs attempting to escape the prying lenses of stalking paparazzi. Dressed in a tiny bikini, sunglasses large enough to cover their faces and a scarf jauntily wrapped around their upper body like a shroud, they bring new meaning to the term "yachting gear."