Observations from Paris

[ParisDispatches]

I was recently in Paris & spent an inordinate amount of time people / fashion watching!

In the spirit of the London thread I thought I'd share my observations.

I was there for several weeks & was based in the 5th but spent lots of time in 6th, 7th, 1st as well Marais, Montparnasse etc

Teens / early 20s were wearing lots of cropped wide legged pale denim with vest tops or cropped tshirts & clumpy trainers or converse. Delicatet gold jewellery.

Or flippy little short skirts & vests. Tanned arms & legs & generally far slimmer than we see here. More natural makeup too. Lots of 90s inspired looks

Around St Germain I saw some incredibly elegantly dressed women 30 upwards
Again generally v slim (I myself have gained weight from 12 to large 14 in past year & so was v conscious )

One woman had an incredible all black outfit. She was in her late 20s & was cool & edgy looking & I felt myself gazing enviously after her...

Birkenstocks abounded . Small cross body bags. There was an hour long queue to get into Polene which shocked me

Lots of beautiful silky shirts at dinner in the evenings.

I don't recall seeing floral midi dresses & white trainers much

Lots of veja on both men & women.

Overall more casual than I'd expected but v groomed

I admire the dedication of French women to making the most of what they were born with.
That's a backhanded compliment if ever I heard one

People-watching is the best. I’d love to think that there are still quite different fashions in different neighbouring countries and that social media hasn’t yet homogenised it all.
I don’t get to travel as much as I’d like to but I noticed in Sweden and NYC recently that the street looks I saw would be very at home in London. No major shocks or novel style inspiration spotted good or bad. But probably I wasn’t there for long enough to really observe in detail.

Currently sitting in a beautiful garden in Paris, and read this thread before I arrived. It’s certainly very quiet - Marais was empty yesterday and many shops were closed for the holiday season.

Paris seems to be notable by its absence of blown up lips and crazy eyelashes. I’m struck by how many women have bare and flawless skin. Not many wearing full-on makeup.

There is a definitely a trend for going braless, and I think this is related to a movement started in France to free the boob.

Style-wise - I’ve seen many gorgeous women wearing beautiful summer clothes. The younguns seem to wearing cropped vests/tops. The men are very well-dressed, even if casually so.

I think this is one of the best places in the world for people watching. Loving it!

Or maybe she did and was perfectly happy with her appearance, knowing all along that if somebody else sees fit to judge her/it then their opinion is meaningless in every sense of the word?

She was probably very comfortable also; bar the odd occasion where I'm wearing something very thin, the only time I wear a bra is for the gym (30H/32G).

Petit Bateau have the best t-shirts. Dd and I both wear them - I love their strappy one for summer.
My dd is very slight as are her friends. None of them smoke ( they are 19) but they are very careful about what they eat- not in a diet sort of way but more a way of life. They would never chuck down a packet of hobnobs and a toblerone the way I would have done at their age. Everything has to be raisonnable .
They love 💗 k gorgeous but they aren’t much craic.

They look gorgeous I should say.

I’ve just moved back to U.K. from Central Europe and am shocked at how fat and lumpen the teens and early 20somethings are here.

Just back from a few days in Rouen , the people I saw may well have been tourists, but mostly French speaking. Most people were really well turned out, high standards of grooming all round. I couldn't tell if the tans that everyone had were real or fake, but I did notice the complete absence of fancy nails. The very few wearing painted nails had them pink or red, no blue or green or black, and absolutely no patterned, long or pointy ones. In the ( very upmarket )town centre a few women were wearing ( low, block) heels, but mainly flat sandals or pristine white trainers. Lots of nice dresses ( variety of lengths), plenty of people in neat shorts. One teenager with her bum hanging out of her daisy dukes was clearly not French.
Some people wore discreet make up, but very little in the way of red or other bright lips, and I saw only one girl who'd had noticeable lip filler, she really stood out.
There were lots of nice sunglasses and small bags, not many wearing backpack style ones.
I spent ages people watching from a variety of bars and cafes, and it looks like the way to up one's game is to have simple but well cut and conditioned hair, a tan and well moisturised skin, and not to get all hot and sweaty!

Glad to see some more observations from Paris / France.

The absence of noticeable fake lashes / nails / lips was v noticeable to me too asi said earlier in the thread. Similarly a lack of large visible tattoos, which struck me as a big difference.

Not many men (or women) wearing sports clothes, as in those nylon football shirts so many men wear in the UK

I agree @DelphiniumBlue lots of slim, lightly tanned, heavy makeup free people all looking like they were perfectly at home in the sun (unlike me haha 😄)

And I also agree @Magnoliainbloom I also found it to be one of the best people watching places ever & spent most of my month there doing just that!!

Great thread and it would be fun to do one for Italy/ Spain/ Germany/ wherever
as well. Personally I rate Spanish women’s style- again far fewer fake lips than I see in London and often naturally good skin and hair.

I was in Rome last week. Roman women in professional roles wearing black! In 35 degree heat! Mostly well fitted black dresses and high heels. I would never contemplate high heels on Rome's cobbled streets so for not falling on their arse, kudos.

But generally Roman women looked very natural. No obvious fillers, well groomed faces, subtle makeup. If hair was coloured it was subtle and classy.

I rarely noticed a Roman woman who was plus sized, not even the Nonnas. I am a size 22 so stuck out like a sore thumb.

The shops in Del Corso were a mix of designer and high street, so H&M all the way up to YSL and Gucci. Teeny-tiny sizes. My daughter found that her size 10-12 was a MEDIUM. Yikes! Young Italians were wearing crop tops and vests, with shorts or very loose fitting trousers and trainers. They wore cling hair tied up in ponytails. Older women wearing looser linen tops and trousers, or loose fitting dresses.

The young men didn't tend to wear jeans shorts, but flat front-panel shorts, which looked designer. The lads wore t-shirts or tighter fit short sleeve shirts. No facial hair!

My hair didn't fare well in the heat, so it frizzed and new growth stuck out, but all the women had lovely smooth hair. Their whole look was very "put together". I felt like a potato in comparison.

Uniqlo have one with built in support

A friend of mine went to Italy recently and from her photos you could see lots of European ladies wearing linen plain colours ie. Looking quite smart. A vest top with well cut shorts seems to be popular.

DD has returned from a month in France. She says the people in Nice/Cannes/Monaco were slender, tanned and stylish. Annecy very utilitarian and no high fashion. However, all of them were rude! An old lady walked up to her (in Annecy) and said: "Your skirt is not couture" !!!!!! WTF

Yes, very true about the lack of tattoos - haven’t noticed many men or women with them.

Parisians also smile a lot and make more eye contact than I have experienced in London. There’s a much happier vibe here. Also notable is that the lack of charity and boarded up shops.

I think many European women, especially in cities, have always been more fashionable and well groomed than the Brits. It’s more of an expectation and learned from family.

I’m not sure women who have professional roles have ratios here. I hate to say it, but it’s a class divide (mostly) or what “class” you associate with. I’ve just been in London with around 30 of DDs friends - not a single tatoo. Some lovely casual dressing - especially the men! So it’s possible but many follow other role models re tatoos, eg footballers.

Sounds like the quiet luxury look which fits with the classic Paris look anyway

My friends 18 (and skinny) daughter went to Poland a couple weeks ago (staying with a Polish family) and said they all ate tiny portions and were super skinny - she felt big by comparison!
My own daughter is slim, not skinny. She likes to dress like a 70s student studying English at Cambridge - think wool short pleated skirts, turtle necks or cropped jumper, wool tights and brogues. In summer she is liking the midi floral dress with cropped cardigan and trainers. Though she seems to be spending most of this 'summer' in her jammies 😆!
French women are more petite by genetics I think. The aesthetics are there too - they like being thin.
I do find people in London dress better than people outside of it - where I used to live the uniform for teens/early 20s was hoodies and jeans or cropped t shirts and jeans even if carrying a couple extra stone too much. In London more short flirty skirts and bare arms. Lots of long hair.

I spent some time in the Netherlands this summer and loved all the neutrals. Lots of trench coats over breton tops. Dutch women aren't generally petite, but they proved that you don't have to be "French skinny" to look well put together.

People in north east France wouldn’t look out of place in Kent or South London - neither skinny nor stylish, lots of jogging bottoms and trainers.

Sorry, but if you go to another country and "everyone" is rude, the problem is almost certainly you. Politeness means different things in different cultures, but if you find rudeness everywhere, you're either misinterpreting people or accidentally offending them yourself.

If the lady really did say that about your daughter's skirt without any context whatsoever, that's not normal French behaviour!

Sorry, that was a reply to @CinnamonJellyBeans but the quote didn't work.

Italian holiday resort last week:
Lots of cotton tiered mini dresses in bright colours (and lots of market stalls and small shops selling said dresses)
Lots of very high heels; lots of high wedge espadrilles
Lots of very short, tight bandage type dresses including on older women (most of whom were very skinny) - mainly in either black, bright orange, bright green or an awful old bandage colour
Lots of makeup
Lots of tight jeans even though iti was around 30 degrees

Saw a couple of stylish older women wearing loose, printed trousers and low block heels, and quite a few in loose linen shift dresses, but these were the exception.

That's what I'd call a typical fashion style of Tokyo women in late 20s- early 30s working office jobs (see pics).
Ruffles on ruffles, ribbons, A-style skirts, dresses are mostly shapeless. Patterns only on skirts, bright colours are avoided. It's sort of a uniform, everyone's wearing it. "Feminine" and "looking approachable" (not overly sexy as it would be seen as intimidating etc.) are the keywords here.
Almost everything is exclusively polyester, and those poly pieces are really pricy. It's cheaper to buy a 100% silk blouse online from another country than a polyester blouse from Stola or Snidel.

Teens live in oversized jeans and baggy tops. Very very occasionally I see someone wearing a crop top or shorts (but I don't live in an area with many students).

@BatwomansRevenge Oh, Ok then. I'll let her know.