Hannibal's Pocket Square Folds & THAT Red Twill Cloth with White Lining

Hannibal S1, Ep11 – Rôti

Costume Designer: Christopher Hargadon

This is my favourite pocket square of the series so far. Hannibal typically has solid colours or paisley patterned pocket squares placed in a variety of puff folds. A couple of times Hannibal explores the point fold as seen above. This fold works well with contrast edges, as seen above, but doesn’t exclusively save it for the fancy squares as we see with the solid light-taupe square in episode 4.

Extravagant 4 point pocket square folds

Auction

Thanks to the Hannibal Auction on Prop Store we know that the pocket square is,

made of a light twill cloth and features a white lining. The piece is pinned into a folded position.

Whilst the auction lists the shirt as a Antonio Valente shirt and the tie as a silk Dalessandro tie, the listing does not offer any insights into the brand of the pocket square. However, as we know it’s pinned, we can assume all the pocket squares that Hannibal wears were pinned by the set costumer. The shirt, tie and pocket square was sold at auction for $500.

Hybrid

The folds look quite atypical if you Google images for pocket square folds. The one below looks to be a hybrid of the rolled puff, shell puff and the croissant puff.

By the book

Other times it looks a little unkempt. A simple plunge fold will also suffice for Hannibal, which is basically a fold and squash into the pocket (see below). According to The Details Iconic Men’s Accessories book by Josh Sims,

it was by the early 1900s that the pocket square made the transition from something with which one mopped one’s sweaty brow or blow one’s nose – and thus, etiquette dictated, was kept tucked away in one’s trouser pockets – to an accessory for purposes of display.