Hermes Bouquets Sellier Twilly 100% Silk H062842S 06

Bouquets Sellier translates to a saddler’s bouquets, flowers arranged with ribbons and straps as a workshop would, and Pierre Marie’s drawing treats them exactly that way: blooms tied like harness, pretty but remarkably orderly. The colourway is the classic house trio, blanc, noir and caramel, which is to say it is really about line and light, not colour at all. The trio of tones also means it never argues with a printed shirt, only with a careless one.

My favourite use is not a neck at all: knotted once around a shirt collar and left to disappear inside, so only a slice of white, black and caramel shows at the throat, a pocket-square trick worn where a tie would be. It also threads a buttonhole as a boutonniere stand-in at a summer wedding. On a bag handle, the same twilly turns into a working trim; around a straw hat for summer it reads as millinery. At 5 by 86.5 cm it does all of this without one centimetre of waste.

It is 100% silk, made in France, rolled at the edges by hand; dimensions at this scale can shift by a fraction from ribbon to ribbon, so tie, look, adjust, the usual hand-finished dance.

The practical warning that comes with pale silk: blanc is beautiful and shows everything. Keep it away from unglazed leather and perfume spray, and rather than leaving a twilly knotted on a bag through rain, detach it and slip it in a pocket. Stored rolled in its own small casket, it arrives at the next wearing crease-free.