In 2000, Benoît-Pierre Emery bought a graphic silk scarf by Emanuel Ungaro; shortly afterward, another, by Dior. Fast-forward two decades and the Paris-based designer has amassed a collection of 10,000 pieces, 6,500 of them featured in Carré: A Vintage Scarf Collection, a new two-volume book published by Steidl.
Emery never had a master plan to build such a collection. ‘I didn’t expect to find so many interesting and amazing pieces,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t really a quest at first, it was just out of curiosity. I had this vision of a scarf that was quite classical because I knew the Hermès scarf, but I didn’t know that there were so many abstract graphic, strong and powerful scarves in terms of design. And at one point, it became quite addictive, like finding treasure. You cannot stop.’ It was at around the 200-piece mark that the designer realised such a collection could be part of an exhibition or a book.
This story is from the July 2022 edition of Wallpaper.
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This story is from the July 2022 edition of Wallpaper.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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