Window Wednesday

A retro hat a tiny shop a Montmartre side street.

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In Paris, the period of roughly the late 19th to early 20th century is often called the golden age of millinery. Historians place it within the Belle Époque (1870-1914) when hats were an essential part of daily dress, and Paris the global center of fashion. A well-dressed Parisienne might change hats multiple times depending on her activities, which is why the trade flourished. Hats weren’t just accessories: they signaled class, occasion, and even time of day. Modistes specialized in high-fashion women's attire that often included custom dresses, gowns, and especially elaborate hats, bonnets, and trimmings.

Today chapellerie refers more broadly to hatmaking, the hat trade or a hat shop, and back in the day several hundred to over a thousand of these shops might have been operating at once, from small independent workshops to prestigious houses. Entire districts were dense with these shops and catered to both locals and international clients. But gradually lifestyles changed and demand dwindled, and with it the industry, as many skilled hatmakers went on to work with grand fashion houses. - BPJ

It's in the bag

 Two bags from Christian Dior's uplifting spring collection.

 Dior

Le Village Royal

25 rue Royale 75008

The Parisienne #2

How many of these are you?

 [Chart: My Little Paris 11/2019]

Clichés are often anchored in truth and in Paris, the (cliché) Parisienne is alive and well. Like other clichés - the Southern Belle, Valley Girl, Sloane Ranger... - she is a subgroup unto herself. Not every woman in Paris is, or even wants to be, this Parisienne. But many are. Trying to change and redefine her to fit your comfort zone doesn't work. As legendary hair stylist David Mallett put it, "You know her when you see her."

That’s her on a bicycle with flawless skin, scarf in the wind, a baguette under her arm. She's feminine, thin, natural, but mostly, she's "bien dans sa peau" (well in her skin) at any age. Facelifts and botox are not part of her world. She can be chic. Or not. As long as it's on her terms, not yours. And her hair! Sometimes referred to as that "just-rolled-out-of-bed look," it's been like that all of her adventurous life.

Long after she's left you in the dust will it hit you that you were sent off on fausses pistes (translation: holes in her stories). And besides a full head of "French hair" (didn't you know?) she's had that smug expression - some call it a sneer, others a smirk - for as long as she can remember and it usually means, “You are a bore.”
 
You hate her but love to copy her. In your zeal to wrap her in as many shapes and sizes as there are French cheeses you forget that she is, like all clichés, unaware that she is one. Or cares what you think what she is or isn't because, well, she just is.

La Parisienne plays by her own rules. She tries to be politiquement correcte and not judge books by their covers, but will point out that if covers don't matter, why do publishers devote entire departments to book cover design? - BPJ

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The No. 1 response to my informal survey of French women about the secret of magical ageing is not gaining weight. Ever. - From French Secrets to Ageing Gracefully - Ann M. Morrison (Lifestyle/Beauty - Sydney Morning Herald 2010)

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Some comments lambasting Parisiennes:

- Believe me when i tell you that NO ONE wants to look like most french women do ! I've lived here for 6 years and for the most part, they shower once a week, don't wear any make up and very rarely even put a comb through the hair! Not to mention about the hairy situation all the time... And the parisians that everyone is talking about are one in a million rich people who can afford to buy Channel and Dior….

- (Paris) is full of people who are not a singular white, thin woman in a messy topknot and Breton-striped shirt. And yet, this is rarely (if ever) included in the many odes to "French style.” How to be Parisian, for example, doesn’t mention the incredible array of hijab fashion you will see on the street every day in Paris. And, while it would be wrong to imply that France (and Paris in particular) is a bastion of diversity — or that French culture has mastered embracing different backgrounds — the reality is that these outdated notions of What Is Parisian only perpetuate the real problems of representation in the country itself.

- Thank you for this article! I couldn't agree more with your points, especially the last one on diversity. As a Francophile, I have been made aware of this obsession with trying to become the French woman since "French Women Don't Get Fat" hit the bookshelves in 2004. To be honest, I've also entertained the notion that they possess a certain je ne sais quoi that was lacking in American culture and that I should try to obtain it. Now, I'm just over it and I roll my eyes each time Vogue, Huffington Post (or Refinery29...) writes an article about this elusive woman. I roll my eyes because I know her and she is just the same as us! Let's be proud of who we are as women on this earth and not women of Paris, of New York, etc.

 

But then...

- You almost convinced me. But then I remembered that the last time I was in Paris, I was struck by the dozens of chic Parisian women, commuting on bicycles, looking fresh faced and moist-lipped, even in blaring traffic. They pedaled in skirts and flat shoes, gamine and athletic no matter their age (...). I love being an American woman, but I love loving the French women.

***

Adapted from: 

Seduction and the Art of The French Femme

and

Eating French: Why French Women Won't Get Fat

   a.k.a.

A French Paradox: The French Non Diet and The Art of Eating for Pleasure - Barbara Pasquet James

Tomorrow:
My French hair

 

The Parisienne #1

 "Qui a dit que la Parisienne était un mythe?" / Who said the Parisienne was a myth?....

You don't have to be from Paris or live there to be a Parisienne. It's a look, a style, a state of mind. - Inès de la Fressange and Sophie Gachet La Parisienne (2019)

 

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Once again the elusive Parisienne is in the headlines, diluted and democratized by those who will never accept the entrance requirements. Like the Southern Belle, she belongs to a category entirely her own, one that no diversity seminar can manufacture. Being a Parisienne is an attitude, a style, an unapologetic Frenchness, an unyielding essence that can’t be minted. Rebrand her all you like; she’ll still be leaning against a zinc café counter in her decade-old trench, surveying the circus with the faintest lift of an eyebrow. Some myths simply can't be. focus-grouped into oblivion. - BPJ

Tomorrow:
Are you a (cliché) Parisienne? Check the chart

 

Update: see December 14, 2020 post

Parisienne rules

 

 

 

 

Fashionable

Above: a happy shopper exits Louis Vuitton

Below: her outfit matches her pet

We are French

On a shopping bag of a boutique that sells lingerie:

"We are French. We believe in being sexy independent fashionable and optimistic"

***

French women care about how themselves, on their own uncompromising terms. They care about their weight, their skin, their hair, what they eat, and how they present themselves. It is tended to with a quiet, daily devotion. Not for applause, not for Instagram, but for their own sense of bien-être. It's cultural. The self-esteem industry never took root in France. There are no Tony Robbinses booming on about "unblocking potential." One gets on without having to brag, considered vulgar and a true tell of insecurity. One's own accomplishments and possessions are downplayed, almost dismissed. At the core of the endearing French Attitude? Most simply don't care whether they are liked. Or not.

You won't hear, "It's what's inside that counts" because the outside is seen as almost always the manifestation of what's been knocking around on the inside: all those small daily choices and decisions, spanning years, had a cumulative effect.
 
Even women of modest means treat themselves to a special accessory or scent, and in Paris, there are almost as many lingerie shops as there are tabacs. One of my French nieces, a young college student at the time, excused herself early from a family lunch so as not to miss her weekly massage - a nécessité, she explained, despite living on a tight budget.
 
While gym clubs and joggers abound, many find other ways to get in their daily exercise, such as foregoing the elevator and taking the stairs, or walking instead of using métro, car or bus. Cities all over France have become bicycle friendly, and not just to reduce pollution. The sacred August vacances d'été, that great annual purge of stress, is coming to a close, and as everyone shares stories and photos of where they went and what they did, Paris is re-energized. - BPJ

***
 

Adapted from: 

Seduction and the Art of The French Femme

and

Eating French: Why French Women Won't Get Fat   

a.k.a. A French Paradox: The French Non Diet and The Art of Eating for Pleasure - Barbara Pasquet James

  

A dinner for 8

Fabulous evening with seven gorgeous, fun, successful women, all old friends converging from New York, Geneva and Paris, excited to be together at the same time in Paris.

Below: classic moelleux au chocolat a simple finale to a sumptuous dinner in the shadow of Napoleon's Tomb

 

Restaurant Vauban

7 Place Vauban 75007

 

***

 

Un grand merci à toute l'équipe

 

and especially Paula

 

Weighing in

 

 

Yesterday I happened to walk into my local butcher shop just as everyone was still reeling from the size of an American woman who'd bought a chicken.

Knowing I'm from the U.S. they asked if it’s true that obesity in America has become epidemic, and brought up something I’d heard years before from a small group of French doctors at The American Hospital of Paris: "In Paris, most hospitals don’t have scales to accommodate such proportions, so these patients get sent to a veterinary clinic outside the city, in Asnières, where livestock gets weighed."




In Paris, obesity (not to be confused with being surpoids, or overweight), while it exists, remains a visual rarity, as noted with surprise over and over by visitors from the U.S. When severe obesity is spotted ("Mais c'est pas possible!"), usually it's in areas that are magnets for tourists, and it is assumed that they definitely are not French.

 
Illustrations often depict French girls and women as stick thin, which of course is not the norm nor is it the desired norm. But fashion and beauty, synonymous with Paris, is a big part of French culture. Most café terrace chairs face the street like front-row seats to a runway so passersby can be seen, and appreciated. One has but to look up at the sky just about anywhere inside the city limits and no electrical or telephone lines are visible because, as a French architect friend explained, "It ruins the eye!” 

 


I used to wonder if Mireille Guiliano's best-selling “French Women Don’t Get Fat” shouldn’t have been titled, “French Women Won’t Get Fat.” When I was growing up my father, who never lost his sense of style (or French accent that could melt butter), used to admonish us to "take a little pride" in our appearance. Stepping out with a tousled mop (think Caroline de Maigret) or wearing the same "uniform" every day (think Steve Jobs) was fine, but packing on the kilos? Not so much. Obesity was associated with personal neglect and lower-income communities and, as recent studies show, still is today.

 
In France, so far, beauty remains firmly in the eye of each beholder. We won't be bullied into adjusting our tastes to suit PC outsiders. When it comes to obesity, health is one consideration yes, but for now, at least, the French still like to quote Fyodor Dostoevsky, "Beauty will save the world." - BPJ 

 

 ***

 

  ***

 

Adapted from:

Eating French: Why French Women Won't Get Fat 
a.k.a. 

A French Paradox: The French Non Diet and The Art of Eating for Pleasure - Barbara Pasquet James

Special thanks:

Treize au Jardin

5 rue de Médicis 75006

 

***

 

 Updates:

 

4/2020 - Covid-19

"According to the first number from a national record released by Le Monde, 83% of patients in intensive care in France are people overweight or obese, the most often suffering from high blood pressure or diabetes."

 

3/2021 - Covid-19

"CDC study finds that about 78% of people hospitalized for Covid were overweight or obese."

 CNBC NEWS

 

9/2021 - Covid-19 

"Children and teens gained weight at an alarming rate" in U.S. [since start of the pandemic] says CDC.

NPR

 

 

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