'Design always comes from what one wants for oneself. That’s why there’s consistency because it’s personal.' – Margaret Howell

To mark 55 years since Margaret Howell began her career as a clothing designer, we invited Penny Martin, Editor-in-Chief of The Gentlewoman, to write about the enduring legacy of a modest jumble-sale discovery from 1969.


The year is 1969 and a fantastically chic art student is posing for the camera in front of her graduate show at Goldsmiths College. She is wearing a black polo-neck dress and thick black kohl eyeliner, her hair in a sharp Pixie cut. So far, so minimal, so modette. Except, that is, for the length of chiffon flowing from her neck. Part-cravat, part-kipper tie, its polka dots and concentric border pattern are from another world entirely, that of a rather groovy gentleman of the era, perhaps. And yet it works differently here, inviting attention, yes, but exacting in its graphic precision. The woman in that photograph is Margaret Howell, and that spotted scarf, bought at a jumble sale and now stored in an archival box in central London, was the start of a thread that has run through the years since, and that still holds special significance for its owner.

The first sign of the totemic spotted scarf’s influence came in two sketches for the line of women’s shirts Margaret Howell began making in 1970 – the year she switched from fine art to clothing design and her company went into business. Buying fabric from traditional English manufacturers, she played with the rigid associations of classic men’s shirting in all its pinstripes and checks to achieve a modern, feminine outcome – seen in the puffed sleeves, spearpoint collars and relaxed silhouettes of these spotted blouses. But they were hard to sell at the time.

Howell found success instead with shirts for men, cut bigger and featuring the quality of a bespoke Jermyn Street garment, but with the softer construction and casual fit of her original women’s shirts. This subtle back-and-forth between the codes of men’s and women’s dress and the traditions of tailoring and workwear was the process that underpinned her first collection of menswear, launched at her new shop on South Molton Street in Mayfair, London, in partnership with Joseph Ettedgui in 1977. It is a working method she continues to evolve today.

'Understated and casual, they are clothes that actually function. I think what people responded to was the fact that the clothes were thought about, they had subtle detail. And you know, people, they notice everything.”

That Margaret Howell’s shirting – and even more so her silk – would play the livelier role of flou to her structured tweeds and suiting fabrics’ taileur became most evident in the series of spotted scarves she started making in the early 1970s. Direct descendants of that cravat-like scarf from 1969, they have served as characterful styling devices ever since. As early as 1974, fashion editors were incorporating her scarves into their shoots – a clipping from the Evening Standard that winter shows the youthful burst of energy a simple cascade of polka dots could lend an otherwise mannish outfit.

'I remember the excitement of buying cloth with my mother when I was a teenager. And I still like to go through the whole of what they are presenting at the fabric fairs because you never know. You are always looking for something that strikes you, and what you respond to changes.'

The first record of a Margaret Howell spotted scarf going on sale is of a “spotted silk cravat”, as she called it, that went for £12.50 in the summer of 1981, the same year Howell launched her first womenswear collection. Over the years, the scarves have come in cottons, linens and everything in between – one romantic season in devoré velvet – their spots varying in size and placement with each outing: 1993 was a boon year for oversized spots; a year later they had shrunk to tiny beige pinpricks on sheer dark brown silk. A constantly developing exercise in injecting colour, movement and emotion into a collection, the scarves series suggests a designer who gets as much of a kick out of shifting the dots a few more millimetres apart or introducing a new border as she might in unveiling a new silhouette.

In tribute to the 55-year evolution of the spotted scarf, Margaret Howell has issued two new versions for Autumn/Winter 2025. Screen printed by the historic Mantero textile company in Italy with which Margaret Howell has worked for a decade, each 50cm silk square features luxurious hand-rolled edges and the handwritten logotype that is the signature of its maker. One scarf is a constellation of dots, the other a study in concentric borders, and together these signature accessories trace every Margaret Howell scarf back to the original 1969 inspiration – and ultimately to the personal style and exacting standards of their maker herself.