Animal print and chain patterned scarf in brown

Four ways this scarf ends up on you

Wound twice around the neck it tightens, and the print squeezes into narrow bands. Left hanging open down the front it gives back the full length, leopard and chains and all. On a mild evening it goes over the shoulders like a stole. Knotted onto a bag handle it still earns its place on the days you carry it rather than wear it. If you want that drape without the animal print, there are plainer prints in the scarf range.

Leopard, zebra and snakeskin on one length of cloth

Count the animals and you get three. Tawny leopard rosettes hold the middle, black and white zebra stripes run off diagonally towards the edges, and panels of beige scales read as snakeskin. The motifs are laid out in slanting bands rather than a tidy repeat, so the eye keeps travelling instead of settling into a wallpaper grid.

What the photograph shows

Gold chains, buckles and brick-red straps

A second pattern runs over the fur, borrowed from saddlery: linked gold chains, belt buckles and brick-red straps crossing the cloth. They warm the whole thing up and keep it from being one more animal print. The gold and the brick red come back often enough to guide the eye through the pattern, never often enough to bury the fur underneath.

Brown kept in check by black and white

Brown dominates, somewhere between camel and chocolate, with beige inside the scales. The zebra's black and white cuts across it and stops the whole thing going muddy. This warm, high-contrast mix sits easily on a camel coat, a black jacket or a cream jumper; next to another print it wants the stage to itself. For heavier cover in the same colour family, the snoods and reversible squares next door do that job.

Keeping the print sharp

Hand wash in cold water, or a cold delicate cycle, suits a print this busy. Skip the tumble dryer, which is hard on fringing, and dry it flat out of direct sunlight so the tawny tones hold. Drying flat in the shade is what keeps the zebra contrast clean season after season.

Twisted fringing at both ends

Both ends finish in twisted fringing, darker than the body of the scarf, which lengthens the piece and moves with it. The cloth itself is light and a little crinkled, so it drapes rather than stands. Worn open, that fringing is the detail people notice first.