Hermes Lettres Equestres Shawl 140 70% Cashmere 30% Silk H244039S 04

Typography people are a quiet tribe, and Lettres Equestres is a shawl for them, letters built from riding equipment, an alphabet where stirrups, crops and reins serve as strokes. It carries no designer line in the listing and needs none; the conceit carries it, and every second glance finds another letter you had not noticed. Alphabet shawls reward the close reader more than the crowd.

It wears best, I think, in the office register: folded to show one or two bands of type at the collar of a plain shirt, then opened wide at the end of the day. In an open-plan office it has become my quiet semaphore: wrapped close it signals concentration; let loose, it signals lunch. Grey, navy and camel knitwear are its natural backdrop, and the silk in the blend gives the letters crispness at ten paces as well as one. Cashmere supplies the softness at the neck; silk, the drape that stops a big square from looking like a picnic blanket.

Format: 140, about 136 by 135 cm, 70% cashmere and 30% silk, edges rolled by hand, made in France. As ever with hand finishing, expect a slight variation in exact dimensions from piece to piece. The type is set in a hand that reads as engraved rather than printed.

One honest caveat: printed type is a pattern like any other, and it will argue with a pinstripe or a checked shirt. Give it solid ground and it behaves like a monogram without the needlework. Mine has lasted three years without a single pulled thread.