French Style!
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Missoni~Heiress
Seductress in Eden
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me losty 
lets talk about clothes 
hehe 
we need more online shops 
Hi,
I have a slightly OT question here. I was in Paris last spring, and as I was doing a lot of walking most of the time I needed to wear comfortable shoes. So I wore these Dansko Clogs:
(Also here’s a link in case my picture doesn’t post properly: http://www.dansko.com/Product_Detail.aspx?StyleName=Professional&ID1=206&ID2=750275 )
IMO they’re fairly innocuous shoes, but I swear tons of people were absolutely gawking at my feet. So many looks of complete disapproval. I’ve wondered ever since if they are a big no no in France? Then again I may just be paranoid…
If any TFS French fashionistas could offer any insight I would really appreciate it!
I have a slightly OT question here. I was in Paris last spring, and as I was doing a lot of walking most of the time I needed to wear comfortable shoes. So I wore these Dansko Clogs:
(Also here’s a link in case my picture doesn’t post properly: http://www.dansko.com/Product_Detail.aspx?StyleName=Professional&ID1=206&ID2=750275 )
IMO they’re fairly innocuous shoes, but I swear tons of people were absolutely gawking at my feet. So many looks of complete disapproval. I’ve wondered ever since if they are a big no no in France? Then again I may just be paranoid…
If any TFS French fashionistas could offer any insight I would really appreciate it!
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LOL!discostu said:
I know this brand of shoes because my aunt lives in denmark. They are kind of the danish version of birkenstock..
I'm not french, but concerning what I've read about Paris fashion sense here, you must have really shocked people
from ny times
ERE is a cliché about as subtle as a safe pushed off a rooftop: Paris is the new capital of fashion. That at least was the resounding consensus among retailers, editors, photographers and all of those glossy migrants who join the fashion caravan on its twice yearly trek from New York to London and Milan and finally to the City of Light.
"The plates have shifted, and Paris is the place right now, no question," said Robert Burke, the fashion director of Bergdorf Goodman, as he joined the crowd filing out into a moody winter evening just after Alber Elbaz's superb fall 2005 show for Lanvin, held a week ago at the École Nationale Supérieur des Beaux-Arts.
Any number of adjectives could be used to characterize the latest collection from this seasoned designer, now enjoying one of those overnight successes that take 20 years to achieve. Critics termed Mr. Elbaz's clothes serene, feminine and polished. They were called thoughtful, which mostly meant they lacked gimmickry. More than anything else, though, viewers responded to the Lanvin clothes as being unquestionably representative of their city of origin.
"It's a very French collection," said Kal Ruttenstein, the fashion director of Bloomingdale's, referring to the subtle jewel-like colors, the actual clusters of costume jewels and the hyperfeminine tailoring. "The feeling of it reminds me of Saint Laurent when he was at his peak and Paris was the only city anyone wanted to see."
Paris is once again that city. It is not merely that the most influential collections of the fall 2005 season were shown there. It is not just that its retail scene continues to set a creative pace no other place, except perhaps Tokyo, seems capable of emulating. It is also because the populace itself shows signs of having been liberated from the tyranny of stultifying bourgeois chic.
In place of the famous and overrated French knack for clever scarf tying techniques, a new style seems to characterize fashionable Paris, one that plays the game of high-low dressing with assurance, that takes couture clothes and treats them as carelessly as Haines T-shirts while elevating street clothes to the status of couture. The best place to witness this is at Colette, the original concept store.
Logic and the fickleness of fashion should dictate that, eight years after opening on a Right Bank street that was then mostly populated by crockery shops and dry cleaners, Colette should have enjoyed its moment in the sun and faded. Yet to visit it on a Saturday afternoon is still to feel as if one had received the nod from the doorman at the coolest club around.
On a recent Saturday the ground floor was jammed with shoppers like Rianne Ten Haken, a 17-year-old Dutch model who rubbed shoulders with a group of aggressively hip Japanese tourists, a small posse of artists from London and Mohamed al-Fayed, one of Britain's richest men, and his matched pair of bodyguards.
Ms. Ten Haken was looking at manga and art books. The Japanese tourists were buying the latest CD compilations from D.J. Michel Gaubert. The English artists had come searching for Libertine tank tops silk-screened with skulls. With the genial assurance of a person who defines having it all, Mr. Fayed indicated that he was not looking for any particular thing.
Why would one, when the catholic collection at Colette is so rich in the unexpected, from novelties (a $10 Be@rbrick figurine) to the fashion catnip of the season (Rei Kawakubo's whipstitched Frankenstein jackets) and the gaudiest of luxury products (a Mark Newson-designed tourbillon watch priced at $58,000), all laid out in a kind of bracing cross-frontier democracy of brands.
"What I love more than anything is mixing historical labels with contemporary brands," said Sarah Lerfel, a principal partner in Colette.
Her store is a laboratory for the study of an evolving consumer society that is coming to treat connoisseurship as a means of self-identification and self-worth. But wait. Wasn't that what Émile Zola was getting at in 1883 when he wrote "The Ladies' Delight," a hectic novel whose armature is the arrival in Paris of an innovation called the department store.
Parisians of Zola's era were obsessed with fashion, image and gratification. Only a fool would suggest they are less so today. An argument could be made that the French preoccupation with perfected surface goes back a good deal further than the 19th century. Ms. Lerfel is just the latest in a line of superlative merchants with deep roots in French history.
Among other merchants who could be found in no other city are Mona on the Left Bank and the four Maria Luisa stores on the Right. There is Erotokritos in the Marais, not far from the flagship of L'Éclaireur, a small chain of boutiques founded by Martine and Armand Hadida 25 years ago. L'Éclaireur not only hand-picks experimental designers but presents their wares in settings of ostentatious theatricality. One branch is in an unmarked space near the Palais Royale.
Once inside, shoppers are asked to shut off their cellphones in order to amplify the feeling of performing in an impromptu retail playlet, one in which the fantastical costumes are primarily handmade (by the British cobbler Paul Harnden, say, or the American collective Project Alabama) and where the backdrop is provided by Stéphane Olivier, an antiquarian known for his eclectic taste and for the tiny house adjacent to the flea market in Clignancourt where he holds court.
"In the States you have such nice department stores, and you have great stores like Maxfield in L.A.," said Nathalie Blanchet, the manager of the fugitive L'Éclaireur boutique (10 Rue Herold). "But here maybe there is more of a market for underground designers, for handcrafted work and a little more generosity to give understanding to these clothes."
There is also, as Anne Slowey, the fashion news director for Elle, explained, "the backdrop of this beautiful city, where you can wear things you could never get away with in New York."
Whenever she is in Paris, she said, she indulges her appetite for asymmetrical hobo jackets from Undercover or challenging voluminous rags from Comme des Garçons. "But I never wear them in New York," said Ms. Slowey, who happened to be wearing a tiered Rei Kawakubo skirt that gave her the aspect of a stylish crow.
"The uniform in New York is this uptight Uptown chic," Ms. Slowey said. "But here nothing looks weird or outrageous. There is more room for expression in how people dress."
Having for decades hewed to the stiff aesthetic and social value of suitable dressing (owning an Hermès bag was not half as important as knowing which was the appropriate model for one's station and age), Parisians have suddenly loosened up. Now they wear dreadlocks with their Rochas coats. Now they are not too snooty to ape the Japanese tourists who costume themselves, Harajuku-style, with trousers worn under their skirts.
"Paris historically provided the stage set for the emergence of a fashion system," said Valerie Steele, the director of the museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.
In the Paris of the moment, that system hums along with a zippy efficiency that leaves the inhabitants of other world capitals looking like bumpkins waiting for a trolley ride to town.
"So many diverse design ideas are alive now in Paris," said George Cortina, a sought-after fashion stylist. "You look around, and you have everything from Chloé to the industrial Japanese designers like Rei to the hyperfeminine stuff from Rochas."
It is not incidental to Mr. Cortina's observation that a diverse array of nationalities is in play. "Paris is, first of all, Europe," said Didier Grumbach, the president of the Chambre Syndicale, French fashion's governing body. "And you have to say it is also the world if an Issey Miyake can show here and a Rick Owens, too," Mr. Grumbach added, referring to the Japanese designer and the American designer who took his filmy jerseys and decamped from L.A. to Paris a few seasons back.
"Our own market is much too small to survive without export," he said. "If we don't export, we die."
From this need perhaps derives the openness of French fashion to outsiders. "Each time we add names, each time fashion evolves, we enter new territories," Mr. Grumbach said.
Throughout the four week lead-up to French Fashion Week, after runway shows in New York, London and Milan, the tastemakers and early adapters who constitute the cognoscenti made no secret of their eagerness to arrive at Charles de Gaulle. "We are all looking forward to Paris," Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, said with a stoic smile as the Milanese fashion week dragged on. There was good reason for Ms. Wintour's ennui.
New York's season, with its roster of cookie-cutter tyros, had already been judged flat, a dud, to put it generously. The London season had dwindled to a smattering of vaguely interesting bijou collections by people who may never actually produce the clothes they present. With the exception of two reliably strong showings by Prada and Marni, the Milanese season foundered badly on self-doubt and overall lack of direction.
Why was that? The dictators at the top of the Italian powerhouses that not long ago dominated fashion globally now seem caught in their own game, playing personnel chess when they ought to be revitalizating their industry. Italian fashion has taken on a glazed look of desperation, a frozen mask of the sort one sees in cosmetic surgery compulsives, people who refuse to cede their position to the young or else yield gracefully to the inevitability of age.
Centered in the window of a multibrand shop on the Rue de Rivoli in Paris is displayed a hilarious T-shirt from Dolce & Gabbana that bears the legend "I {sheart} Botulinum" spelled out in glitter. Paris, as it happens, has no need of Botox when it has Nicolas Ghesquiere for Balenciaga, Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton, Ms. Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons, Olivier Theyskens for Rochas and Mr. Elbaz for Lanvin.
Oddly enough it may be French designers who are underrepresented in a scene whose contestants represent more countries than are featured in a Miss Universe pageant. True, France continues to field its own formidable talents. But even the gifts and the cartoon Gallicism of Jean Paul Gaultier are not enough to hold off the talents from Japan or Turkey or Britain or Russia or Italy or former French colonies like Algeria and Senegal. And some designers, like Bernhard Wilhelm, have even begun openly expressing the city's age-old design debt to the immigrant cultures - West African and Chinese and South Asian and Arab - that have enriched Paris street life, in an uncredited way of course.
Few with even a faint awareness of politics would hail France for opening its arms to strangers or for becoming what Mayor David Dinkins of New York once termed an ethnic "salad bowl." Yet it is worth pointing out that the most "French" collections during the fashion week just ended were created by an expatriate Israeli and a gifted guy from the Upper West Side.
"Mark's show was a little bit misunderstood because he was predicting Paris before we got to Paris," Mr. Burke of Bergdorf Goodman said, referring to the frosty reception that greeted Marc Jacobs's New York show and that morphed into wild acclaim when he presented his Louis Vuitton show in Paris a week ago. To a certain extent, Mr. Burke added, Mr. Jacobs's controversial earlier presentation for his own label, with its queer dollhouse volumes and Edward Gorey inspirations, was too Gallic for New Yorkers grown lazily accustomed to jeans and sweats.
"It was a French show, basically," Mr. Burke said. "It just happened to take place in New York."
"The plates have shifted, and Paris is the place right now, no question," said Robert Burke, the fashion director of Bergdorf Goodman, as he joined the crowd filing out into a moody winter evening just after Alber Elbaz's superb fall 2005 show for Lanvin, held a week ago at the École Nationale Supérieur des Beaux-Arts.
Any number of adjectives could be used to characterize the latest collection from this seasoned designer, now enjoying one of those overnight successes that take 20 years to achieve. Critics termed Mr. Elbaz's clothes serene, feminine and polished. They were called thoughtful, which mostly meant they lacked gimmickry. More than anything else, though, viewers responded to the Lanvin clothes as being unquestionably representative of their city of origin.
"It's a very French collection," said Kal Ruttenstein, the fashion director of Bloomingdale's, referring to the subtle jewel-like colors, the actual clusters of costume jewels and the hyperfeminine tailoring. "The feeling of it reminds me of Saint Laurent when he was at his peak and Paris was the only city anyone wanted to see."
Paris is once again that city. It is not merely that the most influential collections of the fall 2005 season were shown there. It is not just that its retail scene continues to set a creative pace no other place, except perhaps Tokyo, seems capable of emulating. It is also because the populace itself shows signs of having been liberated from the tyranny of stultifying bourgeois chic.
In place of the famous and overrated French knack for clever scarf tying techniques, a new style seems to characterize fashionable Paris, one that plays the game of high-low dressing with assurance, that takes couture clothes and treats them as carelessly as Haines T-shirts while elevating street clothes to the status of couture. The best place to witness this is at Colette, the original concept store.
Logic and the fickleness of fashion should dictate that, eight years after opening on a Right Bank street that was then mostly populated by crockery shops and dry cleaners, Colette should have enjoyed its moment in the sun and faded. Yet to visit it on a Saturday afternoon is still to feel as if one had received the nod from the doorman at the coolest club around.
On a recent Saturday the ground floor was jammed with shoppers like Rianne Ten Haken, a 17-year-old Dutch model who rubbed shoulders with a group of aggressively hip Japanese tourists, a small posse of artists from London and Mohamed al-Fayed, one of Britain's richest men, and his matched pair of bodyguards.
Ms. Ten Haken was looking at manga and art books. The Japanese tourists were buying the latest CD compilations from D.J. Michel Gaubert. The English artists had come searching for Libertine tank tops silk-screened with skulls. With the genial assurance of a person who defines having it all, Mr. Fayed indicated that he was not looking for any particular thing.
Why would one, when the catholic collection at Colette is so rich in the unexpected, from novelties (a $10 Be@rbrick figurine) to the fashion catnip of the season (Rei Kawakubo's whipstitched Frankenstein jackets) and the gaudiest of luxury products (a Mark Newson-designed tourbillon watch priced at $58,000), all laid out in a kind of bracing cross-frontier democracy of brands.
"What I love more than anything is mixing historical labels with contemporary brands," said Sarah Lerfel, a principal partner in Colette.
Her store is a laboratory for the study of an evolving consumer society that is coming to treat connoisseurship as a means of self-identification and self-worth. But wait. Wasn't that what Émile Zola was getting at in 1883 when he wrote "The Ladies' Delight," a hectic novel whose armature is the arrival in Paris of an innovation called the department store.
Parisians of Zola's era were obsessed with fashion, image and gratification. Only a fool would suggest they are less so today. An argument could be made that the French preoccupation with perfected surface goes back a good deal further than the 19th century. Ms. Lerfel is just the latest in a line of superlative merchants with deep roots in French history.
Among other merchants who could be found in no other city are Mona on the Left Bank and the four Maria Luisa stores on the Right. There is Erotokritos in the Marais, not far from the flagship of L'Éclaireur, a small chain of boutiques founded by Martine and Armand Hadida 25 years ago. L'Éclaireur not only hand-picks experimental designers but presents their wares in settings of ostentatious theatricality. One branch is in an unmarked space near the Palais Royale.
Once inside, shoppers are asked to shut off their cellphones in order to amplify the feeling of performing in an impromptu retail playlet, one in which the fantastical costumes are primarily handmade (by the British cobbler Paul Harnden, say, or the American collective Project Alabama) and where the backdrop is provided by Stéphane Olivier, an antiquarian known for his eclectic taste and for the tiny house adjacent to the flea market in Clignancourt where he holds court.
"In the States you have such nice department stores, and you have great stores like Maxfield in L.A.," said Nathalie Blanchet, the manager of the fugitive L'Éclaireur boutique (10 Rue Herold). "But here maybe there is more of a market for underground designers, for handcrafted work and a little more generosity to give understanding to these clothes."
There is also, as Anne Slowey, the fashion news director for Elle, explained, "the backdrop of this beautiful city, where you can wear things you could never get away with in New York."
Whenever she is in Paris, she said, she indulges her appetite for asymmetrical hobo jackets from Undercover or challenging voluminous rags from Comme des Garçons. "But I never wear them in New York," said Ms. Slowey, who happened to be wearing a tiered Rei Kawakubo skirt that gave her the aspect of a stylish crow.
"The uniform in New York is this uptight Uptown chic," Ms. Slowey said. "But here nothing looks weird or outrageous. There is more room for expression in how people dress."
Having for decades hewed to the stiff aesthetic and social value of suitable dressing (owning an Hermès bag was not half as important as knowing which was the appropriate model for one's station and age), Parisians have suddenly loosened up. Now they wear dreadlocks with their Rochas coats. Now they are not too snooty to ape the Japanese tourists who costume themselves, Harajuku-style, with trousers worn under their skirts.
"Paris historically provided the stage set for the emergence of a fashion system," said Valerie Steele, the director of the museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.
In the Paris of the moment, that system hums along with a zippy efficiency that leaves the inhabitants of other world capitals looking like bumpkins waiting for a trolley ride to town.
"So many diverse design ideas are alive now in Paris," said George Cortina, a sought-after fashion stylist. "You look around, and you have everything from Chloé to the industrial Japanese designers like Rei to the hyperfeminine stuff from Rochas."
It is not incidental to Mr. Cortina's observation that a diverse array of nationalities is in play. "Paris is, first of all, Europe," said Didier Grumbach, the president of the Chambre Syndicale, French fashion's governing body. "And you have to say it is also the world if an Issey Miyake can show here and a Rick Owens, too," Mr. Grumbach added, referring to the Japanese designer and the American designer who took his filmy jerseys and decamped from L.A. to Paris a few seasons back.
"Our own market is much too small to survive without export," he said. "If we don't export, we die."
From this need perhaps derives the openness of French fashion to outsiders. "Each time we add names, each time fashion evolves, we enter new territories," Mr. Grumbach said.
Throughout the four week lead-up to French Fashion Week, after runway shows in New York, London and Milan, the tastemakers and early adapters who constitute the cognoscenti made no secret of their eagerness to arrive at Charles de Gaulle. "We are all looking forward to Paris," Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, said with a stoic smile as the Milanese fashion week dragged on. There was good reason for Ms. Wintour's ennui.
New York's season, with its roster of cookie-cutter tyros, had already been judged flat, a dud, to put it generously. The London season had dwindled to a smattering of vaguely interesting bijou collections by people who may never actually produce the clothes they present. With the exception of two reliably strong showings by Prada and Marni, the Milanese season foundered badly on self-doubt and overall lack of direction.
Why was that? The dictators at the top of the Italian powerhouses that not long ago dominated fashion globally now seem caught in their own game, playing personnel chess when they ought to be revitalizating their industry. Italian fashion has taken on a glazed look of desperation, a frozen mask of the sort one sees in cosmetic surgery compulsives, people who refuse to cede their position to the young or else yield gracefully to the inevitability of age.
Centered in the window of a multibrand shop on the Rue de Rivoli in Paris is displayed a hilarious T-shirt from Dolce & Gabbana that bears the legend "I {sheart} Botulinum" spelled out in glitter. Paris, as it happens, has no need of Botox when it has Nicolas Ghesquiere for Balenciaga, Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton, Ms. Kawakubo for Comme des Garçons, Olivier Theyskens for Rochas and Mr. Elbaz for Lanvin.
Oddly enough it may be French designers who are underrepresented in a scene whose contestants represent more countries than are featured in a Miss Universe pageant. True, France continues to field its own formidable talents. But even the gifts and the cartoon Gallicism of Jean Paul Gaultier are not enough to hold off the talents from Japan or Turkey or Britain or Russia or Italy or former French colonies like Algeria and Senegal. And some designers, like Bernhard Wilhelm, have even begun openly expressing the city's age-old design debt to the immigrant cultures - West African and Chinese and South Asian and Arab - that have enriched Paris street life, in an uncredited way of course.
Few with even a faint awareness of politics would hail France for opening its arms to strangers or for becoming what Mayor David Dinkins of New York once termed an ethnic "salad bowl." Yet it is worth pointing out that the most "French" collections during the fashion week just ended were created by an expatriate Israeli and a gifted guy from the Upper West Side.
"Mark's show was a little bit misunderstood because he was predicting Paris before we got to Paris," Mr. Burke of Bergdorf Goodman said, referring to the frosty reception that greeted Marc Jacobs's New York show and that morphed into wild acclaim when he presented his Louis Vuitton show in Paris a week ago. To a certain extent, Mr. Burke added, Mr. Jacobs's controversial earlier presentation for his own label, with its queer dollhouse volumes and Edward Gorey inspirations, was too Gallic for New Yorkers grown lazily accustomed to jeans and sweats.
"It was a French show, basically," Mr. Burke said. "It just happened to take place in New York."
There is no one who sums up the true parisian soul than Sempé and his wonderful drawings, often published in the New Yorker.
I find Colette full of foreign fashionistas. No one there is French. Like having tea at the London's Ritz Hotel years ago. All tourists. You feel a little bit cheated.
I find Colette full of foreign fashionistas. No one there is French. Like having tea at the London's Ritz Hotel years ago. All tourists. You feel a little bit cheated.
well, it's true that there are a lot of of tourists at Colette. But do you now any place in Paris where there isn't any tourist ? Anyway, I think that Colette is a Highly enjoyable place, specially for the books and cds (I think the their selection of clothes is quite poor, especially for men). But I'll never complain about a shop where you can see chloe sevigny, lou doillon, penelope cruz, casey spooner or isabelle huppert shopping.
What I think is the strenght of the parisian style, is that it is never the same from one arrondissement to another. I think this is great that someone from the rue de Grenelle doesn't were the same clothes as someone of the rue etienne marcel or the avenue montaigne (where everyone look like a character of a cheap film about the phenomenon of mafia in Russia).
If you want to learn something about french style, I think it may be a good idea to buy the latest issue of ID, with an Isabelle Huppert cover by paolo roversi, and styling by Nicolas Ghesquière. then, we can really talk about someone who really has la classe
What I think is the strenght of the parisian style, is that it is never the same from one arrondissement to another. I think this is great that someone from the rue de Grenelle doesn't were the same clothes as someone of the rue etienne marcel or the avenue montaigne (where everyone look like a character of a cheap film about the phenomenon of mafia in Russia).
If you want to learn something about french style, I think it may be a good idea to buy the latest issue of ID, with an Isabelle Huppert cover by paolo roversi, and styling by Nicolas Ghesquière. then, we can really talk about someone who really has la classe
My point exactly, Huysmans. People go to Colette to spot stars and celebrities but they are no longer there. Is there anyone going to Paris nowadays who has not had the advise to visit Colette? Before it used to be Les Deux Magots. Or Angelina. Or Café Costes.
Thank you do much for the information, Shadow and Huysmans...it was really appreciated. I love the french culture, ive been hooked on it ever since i can remember.
People here in the UK either dress like a celeb(who apart from Kate Moss dress terribly) or just dress really horribly.
I was just wondering if i could ask a question?
Ive real loads of articles that say most french women have particular items in their closets for eg the white shirt, the perfect denim.....i was wondering what exactly does a frech women have in her closet and does she really have that less clothes?
Also i think we deffo need some more french online shops for those who cant get over to Paris just yet and who dont really like La redoute
another quick point....Here in the Uk, the reason why were getting obbese like the Americans(I dont mean any offence) is the reaosn that we cant be bothered to look after our selves. we rather eat take away then real food and its because we were brought up like that.Watch Jameis Kitchen, look at what the kids eat.
Im so glad i come from a family who love fruit and Veg
People here in the UK either dress like a celeb(who apart from Kate Moss dress terribly) or just dress really horribly.
I was just wondering if i could ask a question?
Ive real loads of articles that say most french women have particular items in their closets for eg the white shirt, the perfect denim.....i was wondering what exactly does a frech women have in her closet and does she really have that less clothes?
Also i think we deffo need some more french online shops for those who cant get over to Paris just yet and who dont really like La redoute
another quick point....Here in the Uk, the reason why were getting obbese like the Americans(I dont mean any offence) is the reaosn that we cant be bothered to look after our selves. we rather eat take away then real food and its because we were brought up like that.Watch Jameis Kitchen, look at what the kids eat.
Im so glad i come from a family who love fruit and Veg
In answering your question I am going to incurr in sweeping generalisations, please take this into account!!
I observed that fashion and food are taken seriously in France. In the UK fashion is synonimous with trends, mostly for young people. You compare a French woman to a British woman both in their mid fifties and at age, when you are no longer young, the French woman still looks at fashion. The British one is on to other things.
French women look for quality that lasts and know a lot about tailoring, but this is no surprise since clothing has been a local industry for centuries. I believe they are less logo-obsessed, for example a "good" handbag is a must, but the makes Lancel and Longchamp are favourite amongst the French. My French friend would never buy LV, and she can easily afford it.
French women usually invest in clothes and have the amazing self-assurance to wear a 4 year old black dress, because it is still beautiful. They also pay a lot of attention to pretty underwear, especially young women. The perfect white shirt (Charvet) is often borrowed from the male wardrobe.
I think that a woman who is very interested in fashion and how she looks will be considered vain in the UK. In France they will disapprove of the woman who does not care one bit what she looks like. The term "sensible shoes" has no translation in French.
When I lived in the UK my house mate saw once the price of my makeup remover. She said: If it costs so much to take it off, why do you bother putting it on?
I observed that fashion and food are taken seriously in France. In the UK fashion is synonimous with trends, mostly for young people. You compare a French woman to a British woman both in their mid fifties and at age, when you are no longer young, the French woman still looks at fashion. The British one is on to other things.
French women look for quality that lasts and know a lot about tailoring, but this is no surprise since clothing has been a local industry for centuries. I believe they are less logo-obsessed, for example a "good" handbag is a must, but the makes Lancel and Longchamp are favourite amongst the French. My French friend would never buy LV, and she can easily afford it.
French women usually invest in clothes and have the amazing self-assurance to wear a 4 year old black dress, because it is still beautiful. They also pay a lot of attention to pretty underwear, especially young women. The perfect white shirt (Charvet) is often borrowed from the male wardrobe.
I think that a woman who is very interested in fashion and how she looks will be considered vain in the UK. In France they will disapprove of the woman who does not care one bit what she looks like. The term "sensible shoes" has no translation in French.
When I lived in the UK my house mate saw once the price of my makeup remover. She said: If it costs so much to take it off, why do you bother putting it on?
Missoni~Heiress
Seductress in Eden
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i am dreaming of the perfect wardrobe... french women love quality... i guess i shop alot like a french woman i always buy quality over quanity...
tailored suits... classic cuts... classic colours at first then more flowy romantic prints... i always think french women dress romantic...
anyone seen the moet ads? i want to know what dresses they use for that
tailored suits... classic cuts... classic colours at first then more flowy romantic prints... i always think french women dress romantic...
anyone seen the moet ads? i want to know what dresses they use for that
Well.. I found 'A Guide To Elegance' at a local bookstore and bought it last night. It goes into great detail about how it's wise to have basic wardrobe items in not just black but also brown and cream - for instance, at least have a cream straw bag.. because with these basics you're good to go essentially.
So I went shopping today specifically looking for brown and/or ivory/cream bag-and-shoes to try to hopefully just a little inch myself away from all black.
And what did I end up with? A bright aqua moc croc tote and patterned silk aqua/turquoise heels. Aghhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
(Edited to add this is a good moc croc, not uber plastic. And I do live in a warm weather climate. And I am still on the lookout for my perfect real, natural materials only brown and ivory/cream items!!!)
So I went shopping today specifically looking for brown and/or ivory/cream bag-and-shoes to try to hopefully just a little inch myself away from all black.
And what did I end up with? A bright aqua moc croc tote and patterned silk aqua/turquoise heels. Aghhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
(Edited to add this is a good moc croc, not uber plastic. And I do live in a warm weather climate. And I am still on the lookout for my perfect real, natural materials only brown and ivory/cream items!!!)
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Mrs Robinson
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Just seen this thread for the first time and it really interested me as I spent 6 months from June to Dec 2004 living in Paris and working for a fashion magazine. I was born and brought up in London, and now live in Munich, Germany. (a temporary move for work)...
Yes, I agree Parisian women look good and know what suits them and to make the best of their good feautres. The city's weight also seems to be a lot lower than the rest of the world too... (in the Uk, i am considered "thin" but in Paris I was considered "average"), probably because Parisian women are very self disciplined. (Apart from when it comes to smoking- altho perhaps thats what keeps them so skinny!)
But they have a very traditional attitude to fashion or style which sometimes infuriated me. They look down on girls who wear short skirts as they think it sends out the message: "I'm looking for a sh*g" and they don't seem to want to try anything new. When I was there I was either being complimented by other French women for trying out new things (ie. for hats! would u believe?! they're not as into hats as u'd think!) or looked down upon with a disapproving sneer: "oh, you're wearing a short skirt again"...
I expected more from the capital of fashion, but then realised that fashion is the trend that people flock to and follow and short skirts just isnt fashionable for them. Creativity, which I'd give far more importance to than fashion, is innate and non influential and that is perhaps what London girls have (or simply the guts to try new things out) and although French women in my opinion have style, proven by their coordination, their class (they never show their bellies off so unnecessarily like the brits!) and good quality clothing, I was disappointed that even in the world of fashionistas, very few were prepared to take risks and stand out from the crowd. I cannot deny that they don't look good- so classy! But I admire the indifference found in England. Noone would give a damn if u wear a short skirt in London, but in Paris u'd be made to feel like it's the biggets fashion faux-pas!
On the other hand, I was in paris two wks ago and was astounded at the chicness, class and perfectly turned-outness of the women and their clothes...but realised its cos id been in Munich for 2 months where fashion and style cannot take their true form at the mo due to adverse weather conditions! Maybe i'm being a bit patriotic, but I feel London is definitely the place where u can find the highest combination of creativity/innovation/indifference*/ individuality among everydays girls and their outfits. Though, in saying that, its also a city rife with cheaply/vulgarly/uncoordinated dressed people!
* when i say indifference, i mean it positively- the lack of horrified reactions when u dare to do something new with ur clothes.
Sorry if this was a bit too long but i think my varied perspectives are useful, if not indicative, to this thread.
Yes, I agree Parisian women look good and know what suits them and to make the best of their good feautres. The city's weight also seems to be a lot lower than the rest of the world too... (in the Uk, i am considered "thin" but in Paris I was considered "average"), probably because Parisian women are very self disciplined. (Apart from when it comes to smoking- altho perhaps thats what keeps them so skinny!)
But they have a very traditional attitude to fashion or style which sometimes infuriated me. They look down on girls who wear short skirts as they think it sends out the message: "I'm looking for a sh*g" and they don't seem to want to try anything new. When I was there I was either being complimented by other French women for trying out new things (ie. for hats! would u believe?! they're not as into hats as u'd think!) or looked down upon with a disapproving sneer: "oh, you're wearing a short skirt again"...
I expected more from the capital of fashion, but then realised that fashion is the trend that people flock to and follow and short skirts just isnt fashionable for them. Creativity, which I'd give far more importance to than fashion, is innate and non influential and that is perhaps what London girls have (or simply the guts to try new things out) and although French women in my opinion have style, proven by their coordination, their class (they never show their bellies off so unnecessarily like the brits!) and good quality clothing, I was disappointed that even in the world of fashionistas, very few were prepared to take risks and stand out from the crowd. I cannot deny that they don't look good- so classy! But I admire the indifference found in England. Noone would give a damn if u wear a short skirt in London, but in Paris u'd be made to feel like it's the biggets fashion faux-pas!
On the other hand, I was in paris two wks ago and was astounded at the chicness, class and perfectly turned-outness of the women and their clothes...but realised its cos id been in Munich for 2 months where fashion and style cannot take their true form at the mo due to adverse weather conditions! Maybe i'm being a bit patriotic, but I feel London is definitely the place where u can find the highest combination of creativity/innovation/indifference*/ individuality among everydays girls and their outfits. Though, in saying that, its also a city rife with cheaply/vulgarly/uncoordinated dressed people!
* when i say indifference, i mean it positively- the lack of horrified reactions when u dare to do something new with ur clothes.
Sorry if this was a bit too long but i think my varied perspectives are useful, if not indicative, to this thread.
Good post Mrs Robinson. I'd agree with all of that. The Franch can be a bit precious about how they look in a way that British (i.e. London - since in fashion terms there is nowhere else worth speaking of) people aren't. But the big bellies out thing (the "muffin look") is unforgivable.
Mrs Robinson
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Well despite my criticisms (see above) of French women's stance on fashion, I will pay hommage to the shopping possibilities in Paris. It has the best shops of any city I've ever seen- thanks to the sheer variety. Everyone is catered for. There's the boutiques in the marais for the trendies with money to spend, cheapo-cheapo shops for the rude boys girlfriends, all your usual high street chains, haute couture and all the top fashion houses (not forgetting their signature stores) and best of all, the enormous flea markets of Clignancourt and Montreuil where items are sold for as little as €1!!! (i found givenchy high heels, black with gold detail, as good as new, for €10!)
helena
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I love this thread - thanks for the input from everyone. Its a really interesting read! I agree with the article posted when the writer says that paris is very creative & that anything goes. when I am in paris I do feel like I can wear anything without being self conscious.
