French Fashion: Blair & Chuck

illustration by Antoinette Fleur

(btw, after these first couple, my future postings will DEF not be this long)

I’m not gonna lie, before coming to Paris I was pretty confident in my personal fashion sense. While I can’t always afford all of the stuff I want to buy, I tend to feel a little over-dressed back home in the U.S. (I mean, hell, I used to wear heels to class almost everyday junior year of high school) and I love reading fashion mags and checking up on style.com. But then I came to Paris….

Now, most of these super-fashionable Parisiennes I’m going to be talking about are probably the ones with a little money. Not EVERY French person looks like they stepped out of Vogue but for the most part, French people just look really polished and nice. I can’t tell you enough how easy it is to spot tourists (especially Americans) just because of their odd clothing. Those ugly-ass shoes and travel bags STICK OUT like sore thumbs. Again, I was pretty confident before arriving here, but the French are just at an entirely different level. 

It may be that the French seem to be customarily more traditional so they tend to stick to a style that is both classic and complementary. Sometimes when I’m walking around I feel like I could find a postcard of the same location from 40 years ago and everything and everyone would look nearly the same. They all wear nice tailored coats, generally in classic tones like black, camel, or navy and EVERYONE (including men) can wear a scarf sooo chic-ly. I STILL can never get my scarf to look right. But I try I try…

The French people I see most often are the ones at my school. They are quite bougy and thus, wear really nice clothes. I always see the French girls wearing those little lace-up petite-heeled boots with tights and dresses. The closest recognizable figure I can think of to embody their style would be Blair Waldorf. Fashionable and on-trend but always polished. The male version would obviously be her counterpart, Chuck Bass. There’s a little bit of Dan thrown in there but mostly, there are tons of Blairs & Chucks wandering around Paris (I know, these gossip girl references make me feel very “tweeny” but they fit). 

The other day I even saw a guy in one of my classes wearing...get ready...BRIGHT RED trousers (and I mean BRIGHT red), a burgundy/velvety blazer, light-blue collared shirt, briefcase and a light blue BOWTIE with tiny burgundy dots (paired with that overgrown, fluffy, messy hair look so many guys around here are sporting). He casually walked in and strolled through the room to sit by his friends who, to my own atonishment, greeted him like he didn’t look like some sort of WILLY WONKA impersonator. If I saw someone wearing this in the US, I would think it was a costume, or they were just crazy. But for the most part, the guys at my school (and France in general) dress pretty dashingly. 

On a personal note, I NEED more tights. They have these beautiful stocking/tight stores all over Paris and I want to buy sooo many. Eventually I might want my collection to resemble Blair Waldorf’s. Seriously. That’s another thing…..now I can NEVER wear a skirt or dress without tights. That breeze just makes me feel like a slut. If you go tight-less here in Paris, you’ll probably get some stares that say “hey you whore,” at least while the weather is still chilly. I saw a girl yesterday wearing a skirt with no tights and flat boots and the phrase “what a whore!” was the first statement which came to my mind. Hopefully this will change as the weather changes, but even thinking of showing-off my pasty legs in public makes me uncomfortable (which is so so so weird coming from California where my bare legs usually make their appearance during 90% of my life). 

One of my statuses when I first arrived here was that everyone looked like they had stepped out of Vogue and that’s still true. I never thought that the ensembles of fashion mags were ever worn in real life (I always thought you were meant to take pieces of each and incorporate them into more “normal” dress) but they are. It’s really cool to see. It’s also pretty cool that the French seem to carry this sense of style from the time of their birth until their old age. I just saw an old couple looking ADORABLE (the man wore a full camel-toned ensemble with matching hat and scarf while the women had on a navy mod coat, camel skirt, and red scarf). 

It’s no wonder “chic” is a French word since it seems to be more of a model they live by rather than merely an adjective.

Hopefully with my time here, I’ll bring a little bit of the fashion sense back with me.

Too much is running through my mind on this subject (specific clothing items, shopping practices, etc.) but I'm sure it'll all eventually make its way into future postings.

(I’m on the hunt for the perfect trench, if you know of where to get one please tell me!)

Elizabeth