Little can challenge the perfection of worn-in white linen.

Whether my collection of handkerchieves is considered vintage I don’t know. They are old, and rather international, having mostly come to me through my parents before they moved to the US. I like to think of them comfortably occupying their shelf like a privy council of foreign and wise elders. Each serves a role, from the plain and modest to the colorful and moody, but the collective purpose is balance.

They are adamantly not pocket squares though. That loathsome term suggests delicacy and useless adornment. What could be more vain than some verboten and fragile little square of cloth worn arranged on the chest? The purely decorative role is already occupied by the tie; a handkerchief is utilitarian, which is why it is pushed into an easily accessible outside breast pocket. But whatever panache a displayed handkerchief can achieve will only materialize for the wearer who is committed to its regular sacrifice to spills, sneezes, tears, and comfort. That willingness to serve is the difference between artifice and chivalry.

And so the most prominent members of my collection are plain white handkerchieves. They have no color to bleed, nor patterns to preserve. They have dabbed at every type of tear and are as gentle as mink to a raw nose. But there is more than just comfort to these old handkerchieves. That same gauzy character enables the most attractive puff from the breast pocket. The less described the technique, the better, but the general movement starts with a gentle pinch of the center, a subtle corralling by the other hand and an inexact folding over on to itself before being pushed into the pocket. Do not look at the results in the mirror—just leave. This takes almost as much discipline as yanking it into service does.

Tonal, patterned handkerchieves work very well too. An honorable place in my collection belongs to a print by Swiss artist and friend, Claudia Meyer. This handkerchief is an example of her very early work given to my father when I was a boy. Faded taupe, charcoal and cream are layered in angular exuberance and deliberate artiness. The result is the most earnest pastiche of the middle 1980s imaginable. I once considered framing it, as I’m not entirely sure it is a handkerchief in the first place, but abandoned the idea for fear of having nothing unusual to put in my pocket for gallery and museum events.

A grouping of Hanae Mori prints: strangely versatile.

Some more complex little wisp of color and form appearing from the breast pocket can also be effective. My favorite colored handkerchieves are an old series of Hanae Mori prints in very fine linen. These are not the pea-cocking color bombs that have become the mark of stylists and glossy magazine editors. The use of color is instead expertly tempered with sparse arrangement, restrained borders and white space. Despite the apparent decorative aspect, these are my most versatile handkerchieves. Depending on how they are put in the pocket the effect can be restrained or dominant and yet they remain fairly casual. I reach for one of these too often.

Here is a test: go to your own collection and choose the newest, finest one and blow your nose. If you can’t bring yourself to use it for its primary purpose, it will never reward you with any of its corollary style. Repeatedly laundering a new handkerchief won’t produce the same effect; a handkerchief achieves perfection only by use. I have a few newish ones myself, gifts mostly. The patterns and make of these are beautiful; I am excited to put one in my breast pocket in two decades or so.