“so aparently you can go from basic to ✨basique✨” — Youtube comment
The account @ParisiensinParis has a simple goal: showing its 421K followers what Parisian women actually wear in Paris. It is followed by people all around the world and praised by influencers like Leandra Medine Cohen, the former New York queen of maximalist fashion and the creator of the now-defunct blog Man Repeller. It feels weird: she is praising an account where you see celebrated the opposite of her excessive style. Parisian women are praised for wearing a simple top with jeans, and perhaps a statement accessory for some ~spice~. One of them (see below) is a woman in Birkenstocks, blue jeans, and a plain t-shirt, with her hair still wet from her shower… This is my outfit right now, as I am writing this article. Where are my 16K likes?
This means two things: one, the account shows a realistic side of Paris fashion, as I, a Parisian, am actually wearing the clothes of what seems to be fashionable where I live. Two: let’s make no mistake, this is as boring as it can get.
A couple of weeks ago I sat down at a café with my father, who just returned from a trip in the South of France. “People in Paris dress better”, he said, but staring at the people passing by, we couldn’t tell exactly how. There was nothing clearly different, no specific rules or pieces of clothing, apart from what we coined as “care”. Parisians seemed to care more about clothes and cared about concealing it.
With the first season of the Netflix series Emily in Paris, there have been many better-documented opinions on French fashion and the myth of the French girl on the internet: mainly, its lack of diversity and its marketed reality designed towards American consumers. This video by Mina Le is exhaustive on the subject. When one tries to describe Parisian fashion, adjectives like “timeless”, “classic”, “effortless”, or “chic” come to mind. Whether you religiously follow famous Parisians like Inès de la Fressange, as my mother does, or Jeanne Damas, as I do, you’ll soon find out the clothes they are wearing give no clear marker of trends and times, just a touch of nostalgia. Damas’s brand, Rouje, is massively inspired by Rohmer’s movies and old movies about the French Resistance during World War 2.
The clothes worn by the Parisians are advertised as easy to find, easy to wear, always a safe bet. Even big French houses like Chanel, Dior, and Heidy Slimane’s Céline recently have shifted their ready-to-wear collections to this easy-to-wear approach. They are the rare examples of luxury houses that actually find buyers for their expensive clothes, so I’ve heard.
But when we look at Parisiens in Paris’s Instagram feed, we found out that this marketed ideal is an actual reality in Paris, starting with… well, my jeans! Why do we praise fashion that brings little innovation and audacity? Can Paris still be the capital of fashion when its street style is so… boring?
One easy answer would be to post rationalize this trend: it is a reaction to the fast-paced rhythm of fashion, as we want our taste to be more mindful. When luxury houses create more and more collections by year, and when fast fashion brands are renewing their stocks every three weeks, the followers of Parisians’ fashion want a good pair of denim, some boots, and an elegant shirt. We could talk about the trend of minimalism, capsule wardrobes, and more globally mindful consumption. French women would then be examples to follow for curating an ethical wardrobe. But I feel now too big for my (Jonak) boots.
One other answer could be the French arrogant one: if people think our simplest clothes are elegant and timeless, it must be that everyone else around us is sloppy in their cheap leggings, their love for sweatshirts, and their desire for tacky, so-called “bling-bling”, accessories. As Lagerfeld famously said: “You lost control of your life so you bought some sweatpants.” Our boring looks are eccentric and bold compared to this standard… Just kidding. I am not as arrogant as Lagerfeld was… yet.
Another answer could be found in the expression of generational wealth. In the old capital of the old continent, where the cost of living is higher and higher, you need some old money to survive and an understated closet to hide it. The Parisian clothes are peak bourgeois aesthetic, the French equivalent of WASP fashion. Parisians have an understated style to avoid being guillotined at the next revolution. To love our style means to love the aesthetic of old money, and the brands I mentioned are giving consumers access to this aesthetic.
Where does that leave me and my boring outfits? Am I only a tool for APC to sell more jeans, and for Jeanne Damas to sell more flowy dresses, and for Bioderma to sell more micellar water, and for Klorane to sell more dry shampoo, and for Sézane to sell more leather bags, and for Dior to sell more red lipsticks? Am I manipulating girls around the world into buying products that will say “I’m cool, I’m not like those other bourgeoises”?
For the sake of fun, innovative fashion, we should leave the boring French outfits where they belong, in the 1960s. But for the sake of my country’s economy and soft power: please continue buying some French flowy-and-floral dresses! I beg you! We need to gain some financial recovery after the COVID pandemic, and I trust we’re only going to recover one French influencer wearing the most boring outfit at a time. To quote the wise words of current U.S. president Joe Biden: “Guess what? [the floral dress] grows the economy. Benefits everybody. Hurts nobody.”
