Yahoo Finance Everything you need to know about Parisian style — including one seductive secret
There's nowhere quite like the terrace of a Parisian café to make you wish you had dressed differently. Next to you might be a woman in black with tousled hair and one standout piece of jewellery; beside her is someone sipping espresso and wearing a beautifully cut navy blazer over a crisp white shirt. Suddenly you're looking down at your own too-bright dress and wondering why you ever bought it.
The delight - and mild insecurity - provoked by a trip to Paris have been denied to Britons for far too long, but one thing lockdown has done is make us fall in love with the French uniform all over again. You know the look: skinny jeans; a dislike of obvious make-up bar a smudge of eyeliner; an obsession with ankle boots, messy long bobs and great jackets; a fondness for tie-neck blouses and little black dresses. Perhaps it's because we miss France; maybe it's that their effortless, flattering aesthetic chimes with our new post-sofa lives. Probably we've all just been watching too much television.
Specifically, Call My Agent!, a joyously barbed French series set in an A-list talent agency, which has been renewed for a new season and also has a film in the works. Who doesn't want to dress like Camille Cottin's character, Andréa, in her tight jeans, print shirts, black capes, colourful boots and deep green coats? She'll throw a Saint Laurent jacket over an extra-large jumper for the office, wear cashmere trousers with a polo neck at home, and dazzle in Balmain body-con at a party.
"Part of Camille's power is that her attitude turns everything into a statement," says Beatrice Lang, a Parisian stylist who works regularly with Cottin. "For a woman like her, mixing styles works beautifully, whether that means putting designer and more affordable pieces together - a slinky skirt with a jumper, or jeans with a glamorous cape."
It is a look seen on many of Paris's most glamorous women: actors Marion Cotillard and Charlotte Gainsbourg, her half-sister singer Lou Doillon, Paris Vogue editor-in-chief Emmanuelle Alt, model Inès de la Fressange, cosmetics heir Claire Courtin-Clarins, and Jeanne Damas - a wonderfully pouty designer who is opening a London outpost of her boutique Rouje next year and has a book coming out. "The core Parisian aesthetic is actually very simple," adds Lang.
That word keeps cropping up during my interviews, as do 'effortless' and 'unaffected'. They all mean the same thing: in Paris, looking as though you've tried too hard is the greatest sin you can commit. "It's the unspoken rule,' says designer and boutique owner Lola Rykiel, granddaughter of fashion legend Sonia. "Never look like you've spent hours staring at yourself in the mirror, even if that's exactly what you've been doing. It's about casually pulling together a subtle but amazing outfit - and it's this that foreigners are fascinated by, but perhaps also sometimes get wrong when they're trying to look stereotypically French."
Case in point: the only thing Andréa wears in the whole of Call My Agent! that is remotely flashy is a gold coat from the Hôtel de Crillon gift shop, bought after a last-minute wardrobe mishap. I thought she looked quite glamorous, but another character simply raises her eyebrows on seeing her and asks, "Have you come via Dubai?" Frenchwomen clearly do not dress in gold.
Starring in the show alongside Andréa are gorgeous women such as Charlotte Gainsbourg, Nathalie Baye and Juliette Binoche, although my eye was also drawn to her wonderfully stylish fellow cast member Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu. With her navy peacoats, black pumps and pale beige silk shirts, her character, Catherine Barneville, is terribly smart, and terribly French.
"Ah, French style - that's mostly just French people being frightened of looking vulgar," says Leroy-Beaulieu on the telephone from Paris. "That's at the heart of everything. They want to try all the trends but they actually feel more comfortable in the classics because they know they look good. In Britain, you can experiment, and women there aren't afraid to try big, bold looks that might be amazing but also might go wrong. In Paris, being chic and effortless in a tried-and-tested formula is much more important."
Leroy-Beaulieu, who lives in Rick Owens tailoring and Tod's boots in real life, loved looking as if she had put a bit of effort into her wardrobe when she played the fabulously bitchy Sylvie in Emily in Paris. Given it is an American show from the makers of Sex and the City, the clothes were always going to be more kaleidoscopic than actually Parisian, and Emily herself breaks every French fashion rule going: white stiletto ankle boots, furry crop tops, and an endless succession of berets and neckerchiefs. Sylvie's reaction to them on screen is spot on: "You have no mystery," she tells the eponymous heroine. "You are very, very obvious."
It made me laugh because a decade ago, I was working at a fashion publisher's on Rue du Bac in the 7th arrondissement. And, like the hapless Emily, I saw my colleagues raise an eyebrow each time I wore anything too bright or too short: when I arrived in a pair of leopard-print tights, a colleague fanned herself in distress; another time, a man I had thought quite liked me refused to go on a third date until I bought a pair of shoes that were neither scuffed nor covered in colourful embellishments. In retrospect, he was absolutely right.
Unlike Emily, I abandoned all sense of personal style, and within about six months was dressing in head-to-toe navy; I also blew my entire 21st-birthday cheque on a vintage YSL handbag, much to the disappointment of my grandparents but to the delight of a new, fashion-conscious boyfriend. I was desperate to fit in. Certain cities welcome people who bring their own look to the table: London is one of them, but Paris will never be.
"New York was a revelation to me," agrees Rykiel, who had a stint in Manhattan before moving back home last year. "There were fewer rules, and yet the women were so much glossier. I was fascinated by the fact they were happy to say they were trying to be the best version of themselves. In Paris, you pretend you don't exercise or wear make-up; in America, you say, 'I worked hard for this body.' It's refreshing, but I still have that French girl worry that by putting it all out there, you're killing the mystery."
Ah, seduction - the age-old Gallic debate over what it is and who embodies it. In Britain, we never think much about being seductive and so assume it means wearing scarlet and showing a lot of skin; in Paris that is a huge faux pas, and the key - as coquettish women such as Jeanne Damas know so well - is holding something back and slowly luring in your potential lover.
"To show your cleavage, let your T-shirt fall off the shoulder by mistake, which is actually not by mistake at all," says model and seduction expert Caroline de Maigret. "You show your skin in some places but not too many, and never in an obvious manner. I find that sexy, as men feel like they stole a sight of your body rather than you giving it to them."
How wonderfully French. De Maigret explains all this in How To Be Parisian, which is one of scores of bestselling manuals published about French women and their style over the past decade: how to eat like a Parisian, flirt like one, bring up children like one, and most of all, dress like one. While these books do hold some pearls of wisdom, they also turned French style into a formula, and I think were one reason we fell out of love with the concept of Parisian dressing until Andréa Martel lit up our screens.
"Oh yes, definitely. Even I am bored of the whole trench coat and baguette bag look - that's been done to death," says Rykiel. "I think modern Parisian style isn't about individual pieces so much as being unexpected but also comfortable. I would never wear a tight sequinned dress and heels on New Year's Eve, but I would wear a long-sleeved sequinned top with loose jeans and ballet flats for dinner with friends. You have to be comfortable first and beautiful second - that's the rule my grandmother always taught me."
Hair and make-up play into this. Those of us who don't live there love to buy into the idea of the ultra-soignée Parisienne with a sleek bob and blood-red lips and nails - but the reality is most of them swerve the hairdryer altogether and barely ever get manicures. Yes, their locks seem to dry into a natural wave that is more bed head and less frizz than anything I have been able to achieve without help, and yes their nails are always neat, short, rounded and clean. But glossy perfection - whether that means a gleaming white smile or excessively Botoxed skin - is never the aim.
"The Frenchwoman wants to be loved for her personality rather than for her décolletage or her hair or her dress," says de Maigret. She wants to look beautiful, she wants you to think that she looks beautiful, but at the end of a dinner she wants someone to say, 'Wow, I loved talking to her,' rather than, 'Oh, she looks good."'
This focus on overall impression is perhaps the reason Parisians retain a similar sense of style throughout their lives. Martine de Menthon is a 70-year-old former Vogue Paris stylist who now works for Chanel and dresses celebrities including Isabelle Adjani and Charlotte Casiraghi. Her view is that seduction and dressing fashionably are as important after retirement as they are at 20.
"I think perhaps women from other countries believe it is harder to seduce a man after a certain age, but that's simply not true," she says, on the telephone from Paris. "I am 70, I wear jeans, I have Margiela jumpers and I wear Balenciaga as much as I wear Celine. I take care of my body because for me, it is very important to feel attractive to men whether you are in a happy marriage or not. At all ages - but at my age in particular - it is less about the clothes and more about how you move, and how confident you feel in yourself."
Yes, it can be exhausting looking effortless - and yes, giving off a general aura of stylish seductiveness is harder than following a strict set of rules on how to dress. But feeling confident, being comfortable in your clothes and remaining convinced of your own attractiveness throughout your life? These are all wonderful things, and important lessons to remember next time you're sitting in a Parisian café wondering if you should have worn something else...
Blazer, £2,200; Celine; Burberry trenchcoat, £1,150, Net-a-Porter; ballet shoes, £670, Chanel
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