Garance Doré has been my main inspiration, her blog-turned-website garancedore.fr (with an English version) is absolutely fantastic. Great style, great fun and great illustration! That is the "French style" girl par excellence!
Friday, January 29, 2010
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Rule number 5: look like you know the designers or pick one
I personally love unconditionnally Yves Saint Laurent (Yves Henri Donat Mathieu-Saint-Laurent) and Coco Chanel (Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel) who are I think the biggest designers of all time (I know I am completely buyist here). What I love about Chanel is not really the "total look" that she created (known as the "ensemble" in French referring to the Chanel suit: matching top and bottom) but her play on masculine/feminine codes. She used a lot of masculine clothes (from a British boyfriend "Boy" or Arthur Capel) especially his tweed suits and jersey, which was not really popular at the time. Of course she would change it around a little bit, making men's clothes her own. Yves Saint Laurent used the same idea when he invented the "Smoking" (women tuxedo). Chanel liberated women and so did Saint Laurent, they both claimed to understand what women really wanted and expressed it with their clothes.
This is just an hommage to their creation and their geniuses!
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Rule number 4: trust your basics!
French fashion is all around key pieces that you keep in your wardrobe at any time: first, the trench coat, next the top breton (blue stripy top that everybody recognises as being french!), the repetto flat pumps because they make your feet tiny and elegant (if that is ever possible) and they are very good quality, then a good leather bag, preferably a hit bag, a good pair of stilettos (black), a silk scarf (I am thinking of Hermes scarves). I think you get now that french style is all about investment, we do not have Penneys or Dunnes or those cheap supermarket but rather expensive high street fashion brands such as Kookai, Zara, Comptoir des Cotonniers, Gerard Darel (they have just launched a bag called Dublin by the way, amazing, I want it, cf pic above!) and they are the best for those basic items I was talking about. Have a look at their website to give you an idea!!!!
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Rule number 3: less is more!
As Coco Chanel once said: "Dans une réception, si l'on dit à une femme : quelle belle robe ! c'est que sa robe est ratée. Mais si l'on dit : quelle belle femme ! c'est que sa robe est réussie". Literally, if one says to a woman, what a beautiful dress! it means that a dress is a failure but if one says what a beautiful woman! it means the dress is a success. Well there you have it, french style is not about showing off but about enhancing woman's beauty.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
1st rule: be a man!
French fashion is all about tailorism!
Feminine but rough on the edges! A good jacket, a well-cut man white shirt, a masculine watch (such as the one Sophie Marceau is wearing in Anthony Zimmer), nice vintage brogues, a hat, a boyish haircut or anything that gives you this little something which makes your outfit not too perfect!
French Style
I was talking to a friend the other day (thank you Anne and boyfriend James), and as a French girl (I think you got that!), I was complaining about my life and about the fact that as millions of people or billions on this planet, I don't know what to do. Well one thing for sure I want to work in the fashion industry but I don't know anyone in it! And she replied to my long suffering by telling me that she read a book called The French diet, a book written by a French girl telling you how to lose weight the French way that is walking, using the stairs instead of the lifts etc and that her only selling point was that she was French! I do not pretend to write a book about how being French is great but I thought why not talk about French style, I mean Paris is thought to be the capital of style and fashion (thought by French people obviously!) so why not use my sole selling point, apart from being a girl and being thus naturally fabricated to love fashion, to talk about what I love!
There it is, my resolution for 2010, God help me!, is to show how pretentious French people are and how egocentric they are too! :)
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