Les Parisiennes de Mamansnet: Be More Aunt Larry

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Lovers of Parisian style and fashion with a conscious mindset and lots of chatter in between.

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Favoured Parisian addresses:

Second Hand Shops

Outlets

Favoured London addresses:

Charity Shops, Dress Agencies, and Outlets

Favoured NYC addresses:

Consignment shops, Vintage, and Restaurants

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Previous threads:

Un Deux Trois Quatre Cinq
Six Sept Huit Neuf

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We’re ten threads old! To celebrate we’ve got thread merch.

Les Parisiennes de Mamansnet shop

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And disappointing green double breasted coat more recently was by Ami. We talk green coats a lot here...

That's because green coats are the best. It was fennel probably btw.

Falling behind here! Xmas party season has officially begun for me and have more engagements that I can count in one hand crammed during 10 days and work is manic.

The African prints and volume from yesterday advent were very inspirational. I love the print clash look in general, I used to wear clashing prints quite a bit years ago , not sure how successfully but tried anyhow. Want to explore that again.

Today’s advent is very interesting (not in a polite English phrase but genuinely). I am drawn to images 7-9, but all those silhouettes speak to me in some way. I don’t understand the houses modelling that with tall models .
I am quite unsure what to wear tonight to a Xmas do with friends I have in nice restaurant that has cocktail bar attached. I am sure I can find something but I know most people will do sparkly Xmas top/dress and that is not me, I wamt to look festive anyway.

BTW I got an email from H&M about being stylish in winter white - they are reading the calendar!

Well incidentally I was planning to wear a Guipure lace cotton top in white or a vintage white lace top I have.

Loving the calendar, so far. It's been a busy week and I'll try to catch up properly.

Joining the crispbread chat, our tkmaxx had the leksands full circles, with their Christmas food. It was very large! Isn't sourdough supposed to be more digestible?

I love the print clashing/matching, though it's not something I really do anymore, though I certainly did as a hippy student . Some of the very stylish African dressing reminded me of an ex boyfriend who introduced me to designer clothes. I like some of the loose styling from today, pictures 5,6 and 10, I think. It's quite a trick to wear flowy clothes without adding unwanted volume.

DAY 6 - DAY 6 - DAY 6

Lessons from Seoul Fashion Week

Let’s just preface this before the tooth-rotting adorableness of it all kicks in, I’m not a great fan of child modelling but considering the frameworks around it that protect the child and their earnings it appears much preferable to purposefully raising children within a frame of public overexposure or manufacturing children into mini-adults so this all looks fairly innocent to me. Granted I haven’t delved deep into the subject so happy to stand corrected that it’s not all that innocent, we long thought that of the South Korean entertainment industry and that’s proving to be anything but that.

Anyhow, yes, f-ing adorable sweetness overload. It’s not so much that I’m advocating for mini influencers, it’s that they’re the perfect vehicle to question this travelling circus (of adults) that stops and poses in ever perplexing outfits for the Gram at every fashion week. Same faces, slight variation in calculated outfits and grooming, lots of money changing hands in between borrowed things, slightly different scenery. It’s boring and pointless to watch this parade of unwearable clothes that express an idea of style while essentially feeling very flat without a true context. If we’re going to insist on this circus at every fashion week show can it at least be interesting? Because these toddlers are actually interesting. Especially the ones that look like they actually got a say in their outfit.

As a child, on an average Tuesday I’d be wearing some wellies, yellow leggings with cacti and sausage dogs printed on them, paired with a pink monstrosity poofy fancy dress, a suede cowboy vest and gunslingers over the top, a construction helmet on my head and a tiara around my neck. Villanelle eat your heart out.

Some boring adult would ask me if it was my birthday leaving me completely clueless whatever made them think that. Try as I might as an adult, whilst perfectly happy to slip into that questionable concoction once more, I’ll never have the same carefree attitude that genuinely doesn’t give a shit about what anyone else may think because you developmentally lack this, blissfully, it would never be the same. I’d just look a bit sad trying to recapture that through clothes when it was never down to the clothes. The current travelling fashion circus feels like that, trying to capture something it no longer is and perhaps never really was.

Bluntly, these children are doing a better job of what the fashion crowd at fashion week trying for because they’re not trying. So more ridiculously adorable children, please.

And more. Seriously need to try adorable #2's legwarmer on the wrist trick

@quirkychick how hellish is the weather where you are? It looks to be moving directly here within a couple of hours and looks menacing on the radar.

Must check the TK Maxx food department next time I'm there. If H&M are reading along, I fully expect a dress made out of crispbreads already and put me in charge of a new brand already, I have loads of ideas, PM me. We'll know for certain then...

It's not so much that sourdough is more digestible (in my case) it's more that rapid rise yeast and commercial processes make the rising bit faster and it doesn't 'predigest' the flour, like in a standard ferment. It can be quite hard on the old intestines same way raw flour is, but not as extreme as that obvs. I like sourdough for its deeper flavour but that's not for or noticeable to everyone.

Such interesting thoughtful posts, bo and great pictures - thank you.

Yay to freedom for short people! I love to see an outlandish silhouette because it messes with every style rule I've unconsciously absorbed over 50years. If Miuccia PradaPrada is on the case then it could get very interesting.

And yay to children as inspiration. Using child models makes me uneasy because, however well regulated, I still wonder what kind of childhood they're getting. But children dressing up in clothes of their own choosing is a glorious sight. I'm finding myself kicking more and more against this concept of what is flattering. I can't quite put it into words but it feels like something that started off as a useful tool has turned into yet another straitjacket. And what's great about children is that they don't care what suits them - they don't even know what it means. If they like something, they go for it.

Yes, I'm in a similar process with 'flattering', Flo. I haven't quite figured it out yet what exactly is bothering me and why it's bothering me now. It has to be related to whatever's in the air at the moment. It's left me wondering where all these style rules are coming from, some are easier to pinpoint than others and therefore easy to reject on account of their roots but they seem to continually pop up out of nowhere.

I often bring it back to proportions on here, it's where my eye tends to go and what feels aesthetically harmonious to me. I deem it 'safe' as it's tied in with instincts tied to evolution and fertility although my learning of proportions is tied very much outside of the human form and based in nature as a whole Fibonacci, the golden ratio, etc.

But I am left wondering whether this not just an easy out. Is it just misogyny, or women policing women (which I've always experienced as the most stifling when it comes to clothes rules). We seem to be rather insistent on women all looking like an hourglass, the variation seems to be from fuller to slighter and men need to be inverted triangles who just vary in bulk a bit. Reality is both these body types are the rarer sort of the sexes so saying that's natural is becoming a bit of a reach.

I do have an admiration for the Gen Z-ers as they seem less caring about 'flattering'. They're wearing things that I know my generation at that age would recoil in horror over, it would be unthinkable somehow and I'm not sure where that enforced attitude came from and my generation definitely still carries it internally. It was very centred on fat and love handles/muffin tops specifically, when the cut of the clothes was predominantly the cause of it. I like that Gen Z-ers have collectively rejected sexy underwear, in a very short period of time Victoria's Secret went from a mega brand to something rather pathetic and tainted, there's more to it than that, of course, but a large part of that is a lack of an expected consumer base and they are mostly wearing comfy pants with fun designs that please them first.

bo, it was raining really hard at about 7:30am but is now just grey and drizzly.

Very cute pictures, thank you (my birthday today). I hope like flo says that they're dressing up for themselves.

I don't eat much bread, but I will have some sourdough. Especially delicious from a particularly good local café attached to an organic supermarket, that's also conveniently near dd2's school.

Happy birthday quirky! 🎉🎂

It's raining quite hard here at the moment, a lot heavier than usual but it seems to be moving on fast, thankfully.

Some of the children seem quite styled whilst others really do seem to have added something only a child could think is a good addition, or a really, really, convincing stylist. I'm refusing to believe there are such exceptional stylists out there.

Happy birthday quirky Wishing you lots of

I kind of feel like I've been had with all that style rules business. I was a big Trinny and Susannah fan in the early noughties and in many ways, I've still got a soft spot for them. But recognising your own body shape was supposed to free you up. What we've ended up with - this obsession over whether or not something makes your arse look bigger - it doesn't feel liberating at all.

Wow, you lot are very good, remembering birthdays - or am I sorely out of touch? Happy birthday, Quirky! :D

I remember one of my girls when she was little - she would put on a skirt with flowes, tights with flowers, a top with flowers and a cardigan with flowers and said it all matched because it was flowers. Different colours and types of patterns, but to her it was a match. Drove me a bit mad at the time but with the years I've come to appreciate it. Let the kids free and they'll do mad and wonderful things! My youngest had a pleather biker jacket he ADORED, and he preferred to wear it with wellies, since he instinctively felt boots would be right and wellies are boots, right?

Great pics, Bo!

I do think flattering to some extent is based on innate perception of balance, perspective, symmetry etc. We strive towards the golden ratio in some way. But then there are the Rules, and hanging out on S&B for a while it's abundantly clear that some have never considered that what they think is flattering or pretty is based on cultural norms. Flattering should be about things we've talked about like lines and colour, maybe personality, not necessarily if it makes your arse look big or small. If we want to talk flattering at all.

I'm wondering if 'flattering' is just one of those words that's been hijacked because others have fallen out of fashion and now it means too much? No one mentions wanting to look fit, sexy or hot anymore when that was generally used. I can usually carbon date a MNer by whether they ask if something is in, fashionable, trendy, or on trend. I suspect you could do the same with what part of the body is considered most offensive, I remember when I was very young it was saddle bags, then it became does my bum look big in this at every turn (thankfully for my bum Sir Mix a Lot came along and I've never had to have a complex about it) then it was muffin tops, then lack of breasts, then lack of arse, then lack of thigh gap then lack of full lips and these days seems to be lack of tiny waist that miraculously holds the resized t+a up and something about hipdips (yeah, no clue either). Probably missed a good few.

What about 'groovy' or 'square' - would they date me?

I think 'flattering' exasperates me more because, unlike say 'fit', it has this extra gravitas, as if it's some kind of immutable truth, e.g. 'I don't follow fashion, I just wear what's flattering.'
I should add that I've been as guilty as anyone by the way. I'm only just starting to question it.

I don't think anyone actively was dressing to be square, were they? I'm just trying to envisage a retro MN where everything is swell and what to pair these roller platform boots with

I think within that context 'flattering' is just code for boring and inoffensive whilst shuttering out any 'negativity' as if it's beyond reproach to comment any further. And I can see how that rubs. It fits in with the wider context of pervasive cancel culture which very much has an attitude of we demand X now give it to us or we'll only get more cross, end of discussion. No room for nuance even when the outrage and call to action is warranted, just an unapologetic lack of reflection.

I think it's wider though, it's at risk of becoming the new 'nice'.

Sorry, not nice I meant 'fine' but typed nice.

DAY 7 - DAY 7 - DAY 7

Vogue Paris 1977

2020 is upon us and sometimes there’s something in a number. We haven’t quite had one since 1999 unless you want to count ‘the predicted end of the universe that never happened’ 2012 and ‘just didn’t feel special enough after 1999’ 2002. As much as I like to think I’m the second coming of Nostradamus, sometimes it’s worth looking back to look forward, back to another special year, 1977, as it existed in the pages of Vogue Paris. Captured by Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin, inhabited by Janice Dickinson, arguably the first supermodel, dressed by Calvin Klein, Issey Miyake and Yves St Laurent.

As much as these photographs feel of this day rather than yesterday there’s something markedly different. A casual observance is captured, not a creepy form of stalking but rather an intimate portrayal that reveals little yet a lot. It reflects how uncommon the lens of the camera was in everyday life.

The direction of the camera is there even if the verbal cues that would otherwise arrange a moment of happenstance, are absent, and had to be captured in one. It’s precious and rare and therefore of value.