Les Parisiennes des Mamanset: A Sin of Pride

[botemp]

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:

[[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FdQbdNEUpGqOyH2oqBQZBVsKISieRgxW_F67mgRLSrw/edit?usp=sharing Consignment shops, Vintage, an
d Restaurants]]

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Previous thread

I like Lisa Armstrong in the Telegraph: she has style and can write. Anna Murphy is pretty good, I think but I am amused about the comments comment.

That is a lovely hat Natasha - such an uplifting colour. I have a similar-shaped crimson Whiteley's one - no feathers, sadly. It's rather shabby inside now as I've worn it so much, but still looks good on the outside. It doesn't go with any of my current coats, unless I'm Queen Máxima-bold in my colour choices.

Oh yeah I'm unapologetic about thinking pizza is overrated but I'm pretty sure I was also very complimentary about Naples pizza.
Am I small minded enough to go away and dig up my old posts? You betcha. But you may have to wait till tomorrow(ish). And it turns out I'm wrong, I will obviously be changing my name.

Yes, you were nice about pizza in Naples, but it almost came out begrudgingly. No need to dig up old posts. Now how about the obvious hybrid solution to all this squabbling during hat talk, pizza hat

Oh my word is that real?

Anna Murphy and Lisa Armstrong are imo both solid fashion editors, and on the increasingly rare occasions they get a budget for anything better than an iPhone with a makeup artist and a stylist (£600 max, for the two) they can be quite lively, as long as the readers are 50+. But for the filler, their job is to filter out the 98% of grot sent by brand pr people, without spending money. So they use advertising/marketing pictures by brands that understand editorial values. So eg, Me &Em does most of the work for them. They use those pictures gratefully.

It would be massively interesting to have a reply from person in fashion journalism and responsible for 40 column inches a week, every week, 52 weeks a year. I would pay extra to read that.

Yes that would be very interesting. I don't really understand how it all works but I'm sure there was a time when JCM would write about clothes and trends without all the brand checking that we get now.

One article of hers that's stayed in my head for some reason was about that trend for fastening cardigans with a brooch. Can't remember when it was but between 2000 and 2010? Anyway I can remember JCM talking about how this was her favourite kind of fashion because lots of us would already possess an old cardigan and an even older brooch and so it was a trend we could follow without having to buy anything new. Of course my memory might be playing tricks but I can't imagine her writing that now.

I imagine it's like that on all the fashion desks, I'm only singling out JCM because I've read her for the longest time

And of course this was what fashion bloggers did to begin with. Remember that - just people writing about what things liked and didn't like with no expectation of reward, but simply because they had things they wanted to say. And we all know how that ended.

What I really wish fashion editors would write about is how to style clothes, rather than What To Buy. I’ve got a cutting I think from a Toast catalogue of a model wearing a cotton dress with a blue utility type jacket tied round her middle almost like a corset/cummerbund. Or how Lucinda Chambers ties a sweater around her waist to give a loose-ish tunic a bit of definition. This is the sort of thing I would really like to read about. I read Vogue from cover to cover for years but it was uncanny how the piece I wanted was always “stylist’s own” ie probably vintage junk but somehow it spiced up the outfit.

It’s interesting to learn how little budget they actually have to shoot articles but I also wonder if linking on the website versions of the fashion pages of newspapers creates a revenue stream as well?

ps I like very thin pizza. Not sure if this is Italian, the pizza I’ve eaten in Italy seemed to be cut off a very long pizza and iwas more
akin to thick crust yuk than the thin crust I really love.

bani’ that Swedish topping for a pizette (?Turkish oizza) sounds disgusting… unless it’s one of those things it’s so wrong that it’s right?

Sorry being obtuse of course linking to a website is a revenue stream but it’s a shame how this must cramp creativity.

I'd say the relationship between fashion journalism and fashion brands has grown far too close to be healthy. Some will say it's always been like that but I'm sure there was a time when Vogue, for example, would critique a trend far more than they would ever dare do now. I can remember a 'for' and 'against' debate about low rise jeans, and another about wrap dresses. I just can't imagine that happening now - are you really going to risk upsetting Chanel when they're just spent £xxxx on a double spread?

The trouble is that PR might be profitable but it's boring so we stop subscribing which of course means they tighten their shooting budget and rely even more on the brands for their revenue, and so it carries on spiralling down.

(I know we were talking mainly about newspapers but if it's happened at Vogue then I think it's safe to assume it's happened everywhere.)

What tourist trap did you end up in to have bad pizza in Italy mm 😲, possibly it was pizza al taglio but that should not be yucky or excessively thick either. Roman pizza is super crispy, almost cracker like that's quite close to Turkish pizzas which are probably closer to lavash bread than true pizza tbh. I'll stop my pizza proselytising now to spare the pizza objectors, promise.

I don't think column inches are best used for styling tips like that, for one, a visual is so much more demonstrative, especially video. And two, that type of tweaking styling is so person dependant. eg. the whole french truck thing, I need to do it a certain way, somewhat at a diagonal for it not to look contrived, the standard practice of stuffing all the excess volume of your shirt behind your fly seems to be more suited for someone more straight up and down. Lucinda Chambers' jumper stylings really work for her but on my frame it will just never read the same.

I think the traditional fashion journos at papers are in a tough spot, they probably started their career with all the perks and slowly saw them stripped away in favour of influencers. I remember Grace Coddington spoke about it somewhere, budgets were so stripped back they were flying economy, no more fancy suites and I think they even had to pay for their own transport at fashion weeks.

I agree the advertisers have become a conglomerate that exert their power disproportionately. Probably a bit has to do with influencers whose job it essentially is to say what their paymasters want them to say and I'm still at a loss why people are just fine with it. No matter how much fashion journalism was mocked as not real journalism in the past they at least appeared to attempt some distance. I think the other part of the equation is that it's all big companies now that own several brands, so by pissing off Guccci, it's all the other houses under Kering you're risking a relationship with. Ultimately it's probably why things are becoming so flat and bland.

At one point there were quite a lot of threads about influencers and their undisclosed affiliations - I think that might have been how our paths first crossed bo? I also remember talk of tighter regulation but I don't know if it ever happened as I ended up unfollowing them all because they'd got so boring, and finding something else to get cross about.

I imagine it's just a matter of time before influencers are in turn blown out of the water by AI and, at the risk of sounding vindictive, I don't think they'll be missed.

Yes, that's how I ended up on MN and somehow stuck around all these years . I think those threads are like swiss cheese now so it might just be me and you chatting on it unintelligibly...

Back then I still had optimism that the influencer thing would lose its popularity but alas, no, I remain, as ever, bemused at people's compliant acceptance of it all. There's been quite a few articles on BoF lately though about how influencers are not delivering ROI so there's probably a lot of reworking and strategising at the moment, AI may very well be a part of it but whether they're able to foster that parasocial relationship, not sure, but who knows, maybe they're even better at it. But avoid mushroom foraging books by AI, those will kill you, apparently

In praise of stylists, the Sunday Times style section today has a feature on Kate Phelan's (long term stylist at Vogue, creative director at TopShop around 2010) collection for Weekend Max Mara. It's reminiscent of Phoebe Philo era Celine, and very appealing to me in being an elevated version of everyday wearability.

Re pizza: I am Team thin crust, preferably sourdough. Lidl's best gussied up with extra olives, anchovies, artichokes and goat's cheese is a guilty pleasure when it's just DS and I. Or in France, where thin crusts seems to predominate. Not keen on American pizza and have only been to Florence so far, as I am saving Italy for my dotage.

Pizza debate has been reopened. Thank you Bani.
For the record I am waving the team pizza flag. I make a mean pizza. I am shocked at mm trying a bad pizza in Italy.

eek what a can of 🪱🪱🪱! We were in Sicily and it was some backstreet and there were loads of Italians in there buying takeaway pizza slices so we thought bingo! Maybe the place we went to was the Italian equivalent of a kebab shop in the UK ie it filled a gap but was far from the best food available and we should have searched a little harder. I have eaten lovely pizza in Italy Eg at Gusto in Rome donkey’s years ago. I am very much on the thin pizza crust team and the dodgy pizza by the metre in Sicily had pretty much a doorstop of a pizza base…

As far as styling things yes the visual is very powerful but often I for one can’t tell what is so pleasing so would welcome being taught how to see why something works so well.

At the risk of this turning into a pizza cult (I call dibs on the head honcho pizza hat) I suspect you had a Sicilian street food called Sfincione mm, which is indeed a lot of dough with a scant topping. But, technically that's a focaccia not a pizza <wields a mattarello menacingly>

Red I'd sort of assumed you'd be team pizza, seeing as outside of Italy, Argentina is probably the country with the best pizzas I've ever tasted and don't tell the Italians the buffalo mozzarella in Argentina is probably better 🤫 I make a good pizza too, as much as that's possible at home. If it wouldn't take up half the garden I'd definitely have installed a proper wood fired oven already. Sigh.

I avoid the disappointment of a frozen pizza but the ones by Ripe Della Gaza that are made in Napoli are very good if you can get hold of them. Especially the one with cheese on the bottom and slightly crushed tomatoes on top, those tomatoes taste better than anything I can get in the shops even at the height of the season, I weep at how delicious they must be pre freezing.

I recently made pizza baciata with courgette puree, buratta and anchovies which was a revelation but I fear we'll lose Flo if I drone on about pizzas 🍕🍕🍕🍕

WRT styling, I think an issue with a lot of editorial types is that they know how to dress themselves (and models, but those don't really count, they're selected on body types that make even the worst designed outfit look good) but struggle a bit when it comes to others, especially when they've got lumps and bumps, at least in a will work for most way. Just chatting trends with options of adaptability seems an easier path but doesn't fit into a more sustainable outlook that the lifestyle sections seem to want to present nowadays.

Yes, agree that most of the stylists play with a huge advantage wrt to having a certain body type.
I personally have lost the interest, never really grabbed me to follow any stylists on social media. To be honest most of the stuff I look at it and think - uh? Do you really need to tell me that? And once they have shown a semi tuck or a way to knot a neck scarf … well … there is only so many more you can watch … at the moment I see them as extremely repetitive or trying to be different and presenting some questionable mixes of stuff.
of course there might be exceptions, but I have fallen out of love with the ones I see in social media or read in the papers.

Flo and I are very aligned in our values I think, pizza being no exception 😂

The series Chef's Table on Netflix did an episode on the best pizza in the world (allegedly) which is from Pizzeria Bianco in Arizona. Basically good ingredients are the focus. A lot of introspective gazing at tomatoes and wheat. But I took from him the idea to make a raw tomato sauce for my pizza. Just smoosh up tomatoes, garlic, basil, salt. Very very handy and I recommend. Didn't watch the whole episode, it was more about the chef than pizza, so a dud for me ;)

I'd like columns on how to shop my wardrobe or style things, I'm one of those who can't work things out for myself (as mm47 says, and one of the things I've really enjoyed about for example Bo's advent calendars). And Bo, they could write about the styling with the odd pic and make it interesting enough for us to go search out videos of it, surely? It would be more interesting than advertising copy masked as journalism (basically what Desmond said). Maybe I just miss good blogs.

Sellpy can feck off, bad photos, bad descriptions, random results when shopping. Also, more to the point, I think I fancied a floral midi to feel With It more than actually wanting one. I was young in the early 90s after all... Also I see no prints I like. Am currently in a no-pattern phase tbh.

<boak> at wearing a pizza hat. Genuinely. Maybe it's my age but the idea of smelling that all the time...

I don't buy the craziest pizzas here, the craziest I could go is an ordinary kebab pizza, pic attached. Genuinely considered normal here!

Oh anyway, what's the opinion on the Uniqlo C collection? Claire Waight Keller, whom I do not know? Materials seemed poor I thought :/ but I liked the colour-blocking on the pleated skirt. https://www.uniqlo.com/us/en/products/E462663-000/00?colorDisplayCode=36&sizeDisplayCode=003

I worked at the Telegraph approx 10 years ago, and due to the nature of my project spent a lot of time in the post room.

The amount of deliveries the fashion desk had in was unreal, alas I was skelping around cages of IT equipment and wasn't allowed to swap!

They did have the occasional book and beauty sale which was a real perk, but a lot of the designer items were either on loan I believe.

A really interesting place to be for the duration I was there, I bet its changed a lot with the rise of social media.

Also, loving the hat links.

I ordered a fedora from All Saints but the colour and fit weren't quite right so back it went.

I do think it should be illegal however to have a millinery website and not have photos of the hats on models! Bo the Paris one you linked had some gorgeous pieces but I'd like to see them on an actual head

There are some pictures on her Instagram but mostly from editorial shoots. I've never bought hats online though so never gave it much thought, it feels like one of those have to try in person thing.

We did discuss the CWK Uniqlo collection on here Bani, I was probably overly harsh about it, but the gist of it is, that I found the bulk not to look like there was much design to it, the stylist managed well with the meager pickings but my main concern is that the prices are too low to be decent quality so it's probably more in line with other colabs like JW Anderson and Ines de la Fresange for Uniqlo which are crappy fabrics as opposed to the Jil Sander collection that really pushed on getting high quality finishes and some fabrics.

CWK was the first female head designer at Givenchy most recently (also did Meghan's dress, not the best example of her work) and before that was at Chloé for a long time to much acclaim and financial success (for the brand). I think Desmond was going to have a punt with a few things from the C collection.

The Uniqlo:C colab doesn't open until next week. I shall probably get a baseball cap(!) and may give the wide leg cords a whirl... in navy or mustard because I am short on winter navy, even denim, and mustard bottom halves. But I'll buy one of each across two sizes to establish the fit, fabric and finish. I suspect that it will be done too cheaply, but there's only one way to find out. I will report back in due course.