Les Parisiennes des Mamansnet: Do not ask the kock about les préservatifs in the food.

[botemp]

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

---

Favoured Parisian addresses:

Second Hand Shops

Outlets

Favoured London addresses:

Charity Shops, Dress Agencies, and Outlets

Favoured NYC addresses:

Consignment shops, Vintage, and Restaurants

---

Previous threads:

Un

Deux

Trois

Quatre

Cinq

Six

Sept

Huit

Neuf

Dix

Onze

Douze

Treize

Quatorze

Oh, and you know, standard welcome to my Ted talk disclaimer...

Thanks for the debrief on the walking trousers red; very useful to know how true the sizes are, so if you tell me they are awesome to wear, I may venture in but I might upsize too.

Interesting reflections on "pretty": heading towards my dotage, decent for age is the best that can be hoped for as a comment on physical body, but when younger I quite often mistrusted people who liked to hang around with pretty people... it was so commonplace on the verges of the music industry, but also almost essential to succeeding. A good looking, well-styled competent band got way more bookings than less-blessed competitors.

Is that the red from the new J+ line, Elle? It's tempting to explore.

Envious of the snood bo... just

Great pictures, Shrike, as a fellow grey/silver haired person, flo is right about the drinks cabernet, too. I agree that a lot of women are hypercritical of themselves, I think my parents brought us up with a very unbritish body acceptance that has stood me in good stead as an adult. I also think I have gained more confidence as I've got older.

I think I may have had a punctuation fail, I hope that makes sense.

It makes sense either way quirky as I'm also a grey / silver hair person .

Thanks for the tip bo. I've tethered the pockets more securely under the waistband and I'm wearing them again today. If they're still slipping, I'll add a strip of fabric as you suggest. I'd like to make them work because I really do like the shape and, aside from the zip (and adding the side pockets but that was self inflicted) they were reasonably straightforward to make.

xing tomorrow I will get the trousers and wear them inside for an hour or so to really see how good they are and then I give you proper feedback. I am still not fully sure if I keep the larger size or not … I might ask in mn other people’s experiences if they give in or not …
Oh! And I was in London yesterday and I bumped into The Fold sample sale… truly bumped onto it. It was the last 2 hours before they were closing and I came out with two tops and a jacket … the jacket was free! Some items had a gold dot, premium , and you could get a non premium for free. I only paid £60 pounds for each of the tops. One in velvet and the other silk. They fit me perfectly and I plan to wear them for new year, xmas etc. and general end of year met ups. The blazer is made for me too. Truly chuffed. Will send photos.

I forgot to say flo, I am truly of your ability to construct clothes. I know you have mistakes sometimes, but I think you have a real hand for it.

Thank you Red that's very kind although I'm not sure it's entirely deserved! I'd make far fewer mistakes if I did a toile first. I just can't bring myself to do it - I'd hate every second.

By the way I don't know if any of you have noticed but there's quite a lot of love around for tank tops at the moment. At least two threads this week alone. Just saying....

They are still rank tops in my little book of damnation...

I finished 'House of Glass' this weekend, thanks for the recommendation. I sobbed through most of it, I had not expected so many parallels with my own family history and I'm now left with a mild existential crisis wondering if my obsession of being surrounded by and appreciating beauty is some sort of generational trauma coping mechanism and I've been living some sort of lie that it's an innate characteristic of my own.

Anyhow, book was excellent and I really enjoyed the interwoven tales of Paris and Haute Couture through it.

I still haven't gotten round to taking pics of the Dries trousers, will try again at some point.

I'm glad you enjoyed the book although I realise that's a poor choice of wording. Hadley Freeman's becoming one of my favourite writers. I liked her back when she was a rookie on the fashion desk but I think she's gone up several gears since then. The way she can segue from fashion to fascism and then back again without hitting a single off note is quite remarkable I think. Her Guardian interviews are great too - she can meet with the Rosenberg's sons one week and Maria Carey the next but she always takes them seriously.

The twisted bag is nice botemp. I know what you mean about the proportions. The seau sangle is long which works with my height and just reads as a shoulder bag, but I can see how it would hit strangely on someone smaller. I have the opposite issue with little bags, which look ridiculous on me in an Alice in Wonderland way.

xing yes the red is from J+, I really like the colour.

What a bargain from The Fold red. The have lots of useful work pieces and mostly use nice fabrics – wool blends for the dresses etc. which I appreciate.

I caved and bought a jumper and “twinset” from Loulou Studio as LVR had 30% off. I’ll see what they’re like, or what I think they’ll be like in a few months, when they arrive. It was very much an impulse buy and I can’t even blame drink for ordering a knitted cropped tank when fairly heavily pregnant. I haven’t bought anything in ages.

Off to download The Glass House to my kindle.

It is and it isn't, isn't it? There's surprising moments of levity and humour that don't feel out of place. She handled the material very well in that sense. I've also been a big fan of her writing for a long time (and miss her column dreadfully now but understand her reasons for moving on) and I appreciate that she can be quite serious one moment in her writing and then confess to things not deemed suitable to the serious as I find that a much more realistic reality of most people's tastes. She can be a good devil's advocate too, unfortunately for those who don't think too deeply they automatically assume she therefore presents the "evil" other side when it's more a case of she knows how a good argument is crafted and therefore it's not that hard to spot a badly constructed one. Her take on 'grey' characters in the war was an interesting one too.

I also recently read Miss Dior by Justine Picardie which is a nice companion piece in a way, also originally a fashion writer, editor at Harper's Bazaar iirc. It's about Catherine Dior, Christian Dior's younger sister who was part of the French resistance, captured, tortured by the Gestapo for interrogation and then sent on to various concentration camps as slave labour. It's a horrific account and focuses much more on how destructive the Nazi ideology was to women in particular (including German women). Miraculously she survived but never spoke of it, her immense courage and bravery somewhat forgotten as a result. It's a little bit more detached as a result but also more confronting in its outright description of everything. It's mostly pieced together by other sources but still a riveting read (although the overly floral descriptive interspersed here and there could have used a good edit imho).

Xposted with Elle, ha the old twin-set, I think it could work quite well when pregnant actually, I'm assuming layered over something like a dress. Wasn't there a period in the early 00s when bare pregnant bellies were suddenly a thing in Hollywood?

I was thinking the cardi over a dress. I guess the top could go over a dress too, but I was more thinking of it for under the cardi with a pair a of high waisted trousers post-baby.

I see Roland Mouret is heading into administration. I'm not surprised really. They struggled to move the aesthetic on post-Galaxy dress and while that very fitted workwear look was still popular through most of the 2010s, a few years ago it started to feel very dated and the brand didn't seem to pivot in response. Not to mention the very obvious devastation that the pandemic wreaked on the formal / occasion clothes market.

Oh my - Roland Mouret. I remember That Dress being voted 'dress of the year' - or was the decade?
To be honest, if I had a few £000s to spare (I don't) I'd be thinking about snapping up the label as I'm sure that look will come roaring back at some point, along with high heels. Admittedly it might not happen in the workplace but I'm already seeing young women going out for the night dressed like it's 2005.

I like that knitted top Elle and, if you don't feel like channelling early noughties celebs, you could always layer it over a longer vest or something, if it's loose fitting.

I was looking at 'Miss Dior' the other week - might ask for it for Christmas.

Please someone buy something red from *J and report back, otherwise I'm going to end up cracking and ordering a skirt with a thigh-high split.

Hmm maybe I missed a few zeros off the cost of buying up Roland Mouret! Anyway point still stands I think.

I was thinking of a red knit dress from Uniqlo, not sure if that satisfies you enough Flo. I've completely missed a thigh high split thingy, I assume it would be like knee high on me though...

Yes poor Roland Mouret, I think the last couple of years people mostly bought out the sample sales as they were notoriously good and I'm guessing all the celebrities were borrowing rather than buying. The price point was massively out of touch for a long time though.

I think it was once heavily rumoured that he basically manufactured all of Victoria Beckham's things when she started and had a lot of design help from the company too. I think she's still yet to turn a profit.

Business news from the UK seems to be bad all-round, I saw Matches Fashion lost 50 million pounds in 2020 combination of Brexit and COVID.

I've also been eyeing Anne Sebba's, 'Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940s' that someone recommended under a Miss Dior review (Catherine also features in that apparently) but the fact that it's massive has put me off so far but the first whiny review complaining about how there was too much fashion in it should spur me on. I suspect this will be a better read than Miss Dior.

Catchup:

I love that snood, Bo, seems to have a different shape. The company really is a 1 % sort of place alright! Are you even allowed the clothes if you can't wear them while wafting along at least 30 metres of clear hand-soaped wide wood planks to your floor to ceiling windows to gaze out upon the world?

Speaking of button-adjustable elastic waists, I'm after buying* these pandemic chic trousers (pic attached) in a colour called brown (it's clearly not brown). Well, I call them pandemic chic but mr Bani thinks they're rather more OAP. But I don't care. They are supremely comfortable which outweighs his opinion and my guilt over buying cheaply made and priced clothes again. (I'll admit I hadn't planned to wear them out to the extent i am, more as sort of lounge wear. But here I am at work!)

Red, I need a pair of "outdoorsy" trousers for my forest walks too. Will look at that brand.

As somebody who has always been/felt less attractive than people around me, I agree completely with Elle here: I have seen threads where posters explain their experience of being plain and are constantly shot down with a barrage of “everyone is beautiful” and “nice people are beautiful” and I think that’s really patronising too. It’s fairly obvious that attractiveness is a continuum and while some are at the top, some must inevitably be at the bottom. It’s not fair to invalidate the experiences of those who are telling people what’s it’s like to not be conventionally attractive in a society that values it so much

Flo - I think I've seen youtube tutorials that show how to sew the pocket flap to the side seam in a clever way in order to keep it down/inside. I'll see if I can find it.

I never knew about Miss Dior, I must note these books down.

Shame about Mouret, I think there's definitely a place for that aesthetic and on some level it never gets old. I've always liked the wide-legged wool trousers but have put them out of my mind since they're out of budget.

Speaking of red, Zara do a red wool coat every year (it seems) that is just the perfect shade of red. Can't find it on the website, they all seem either a bit too light or too dark.

*please note, Irish grammar

I read Miss Dior a couple of years ago, did I mentioned it here? Cannot remember, but I found it fascinating really interesting good read.
I will download The Glass House now.

Update on the açai trousers for xing I am keeping my size after all, the 28. I wore them for quite a while and they don’t dig in and the inside fleece is lovely and soft. As walking trousers go I like them a lot, they will get a lot of use walking the dog or standing next to a hockey pitch.
The size up after a while starting gaping around the crotch area (third photo), the photos might not be the best , the colour was difficult to catch and the first photo looks a bit weird imo like not sitting on the waist but I think that is my angle more than anything.
The twinset looks great Elle I see that really suiting you. I did not get any dresses but I saw some lovely in wool like you mentioned, I am not going enough to the office to justify and in the next couple of weeks we might go even less. But the tops were more wearable for me.

Photos here

Mn playing up ! I have not uploaded anything today and tells me I can only upload 3 photos … will try to post later

Red which book did you read as Miss Dior was only recently published, September 2021 iirc. It waffles in places, I was fairly convinced there was a whole Wallace Simpson insert which had nothing to do with Catherine Dior in there to draw an unspoken parallel to the Megxit situation but still an interesting read regardless, at least the first 2/3 of it anyhow. I'm not really selling it well, am I?

Bani I like the look of the trousers but Irish grammar confuses me so no idea if you actually own them or not I agree with the "everyone is beautiful" nonsense not only does it clumsily insinuate that you're a horrible person if you're unattractive but it's in the general vein of telling people (women notably, but children too) just be nice or shut up.

I'm pleased to be able to translate on this occasion - Bani bought the trousers.

I'm after doing = I did

Oh god stop "be kind" needs to die already, only said to women...

So I didn’t read Miss Dior! What did I read? … definitely Dior in it and a lot of the French resistance and one of the characters taken away to a camp … I will search my kindle and come back to you.
These are the açai trousers.

This is why I'm terrible at long-running threads, I bugger off for a week or so and then the conversation moves on. YES, it was in response to the 'pretty privilege' thread. I'm an attractive woman that's never really felt terrible downsides that people speak about. I was out for dinner with my sisters last week (we don't get to meet together enough) and I was telling them about women on that thread who stated 'women hate me because I'm beautiful'. It's not true.

Why do I post photos on MN? For a few reasons, J really hate certain ideas about middle aged women, particularly those with grey hair. I work in tech, the least anonymous thing about you is your face, everyone I know knows what I look like.

And I do have the best drinks cabinet!

Yes, the Ginzas, I emailed and they have refunded 50%, as they sent the wrong colourway. So that's a win!

I'm in Portugal atm, first visit, I felt quite emotional when the plane touched down, it's the first time we've travelled for two years, we're by the Atlantic until tomorrow, then off to Lisbon.

And yes @ToEllewithIt I've never 'been kind' in my life.

I'm not sure 'kindness' is a virtue. The only person I know that espoused it was the most awful person I ever met.