Les Parisiennes des Mamanset: On the Advent of Newness

[botemp]

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

Previous thread

(I've removed the usual links to recommended shops and other places guides from the OP because I suspect they're getting very out of date at this point)

@LadyEloise1 , not Flo, but it's because the thread is usually polyester and that doesn't take dye well.

Thanks Poppy for the share link, I had planned to go lazy perusing all the shows this morning so that's being added to the pile. I've only seen Simone Rocha for Jean Paul Gaultier so far and I fear my expectations were too high. It was perfectly lovely and very clever in its references but I think I had just anticipated more 🤷

Thank you @botemp
I thought as much. I dyed a blue dress navy as bleach splashed on it ( when will I ever learn! ) and the stitching didn't take. It's still blue but actually it is a nice contrast with the navy.
The dress dyed really well - I thought the bleached part might not take the dye but it was great.

Oh, and a warning, my JWA trousers arrived from Farfetch and I wasn't planning on returning them so that's a good thing as they now seem to be having a final sale no returns policy which is bloody illegal 🤬 I did see there's a workaround to generate a return but I'd anticipate issues, it really annoys me when companies do this.

Has put me off shopping with them altogether, was already a bit nervy since their recent financial woes and subsequent last minute takeover. It also arrived without any of the usual fancy packaging. I don't foresee them doing well if this is their new strategy, granted, I'm sensing a lot of panic and desperation at the luxury price point ATM, it might just be me but I don't remember prices being slashed as much as this with still a lot of stock available before.

@LadyEloise1 , no experience with it myself but I have seen some people say you can cover the stitches that don't take dye with permanent marker and that will keep the colour somehow.

Sorry LadyEloise1, I've only just spotted this but, as bo says. most modern stitching is polyester and often don't absorb the dye, leaving a two-colour effect, which sometimes works but often doesn't. I've not tried using a marker pen to cover them, although I did use one recently to hide a mark on a jacket.

Legalities aside, that sounds like cheeky fuckery of the highest order from Farfetch bo and they deserve to get their arses kicked very, very hard. Glad you've got the trousers though!

MmePoppy I've not read the article yet but the colours and the combinations in the photos look fab. And a share token too - thank you.

I made my first grab of 2024 yesterday: a John Smedley cardigan in that extra fine merino they do, V neck, loose fitting in a grape/plum. Lightweight enough to go under a jacket, nothing exciting but should be useful. At this rate my clothing spend for January should be less than a tenner meaning more spare cash next month!

Thank you @Floisme.

Has anyone on this thread ever bought from dresslemuse.com ?

Yeah, definitely cheeky fuckery, Flo. Farfetch did send me a questionnaire asking how they did, I should probably answer to at least give them a chance to atone and change their ways but tbh I did that after my last Browns misadventure (who are entirely owned and part of Farfetch) and even though I was promised a response, it never came.

Therefore I can't really be bothered, I'm not a big shopper with FF anyhow, usually a case of the only ones that have something specific I want and where possible I'll try to figure out who is selling it through them (as they're a sort of market place for boutiques but there seem to be a lot less of those on there these days) and buy from them directly. Tbh I've never understood the FF business model, or the financial market hype around it (obviously I'm not a business/finance person). I found a lot of out of the way interesting boutiques through them form their early days but I'm kind of fine with it dying a slow death now or welcome their new Korean overlords transform it into something else.

I've never shopped at dress le muse, @LadyEloise1 , it looks to be Lithuanian and it kinda makes me sad they have to pretend to be French. Lithuania has an amazing and very high skilled garment industry, it's a shame that's not recognised more and a whiff of French marketing is needed to sell.

Interesting article in the observer about the new five a year rule, I'm already screwed as in January I bought two new things, four if we're counting two replacement bras. And that's what always irks me with buy max X number of items a year, I usually buy things like socks or underwear once and just buy a bunch of the same and they therefore all tend to wear out around the same time so suddenly you're in need of quite a few new pairs of tights, socks, whatever, that would pretty much swallow up all your quota.

Oh for heavens sake - so millennials have discovered second hand clothes have they? Pardon my French but fuck the fuck off, we've been doing that for decades.

Ahem. I will now go and get a soothing espresso and check out Dress Le Muse.

On behalf of millennials, be kind to us already we grew up in the post feminist bling bling logomania pornified era, we didn't know better, okay? 😞

I'm interested in what you think of the clothing. It looks nice but I don't know anyone who has ordered from it.

Sorry bo it was the 'I've got something very new and important to tell you' way it was written that did it It's on a level with believing your generation invented sex. Anyway Alexandra Shulman's a boomer, surely? She's my age.

Haha, I had that exact same response to the teenagers and her friends discovering the novelty and joy of shopping in bricks and mortars in that article.

I do think the whole framing it as a social event does add to it, so it's not just a kilo sale event type thing for the well weathered vintage shoppers. People seem to find community in it and finding it more valuable than online and I can only view that as a positive (but I think the low low prices aspect of it is overlooked here, max £200 for high end designer betrays this as a one off. If they were to replicate it again and again, the bargain hunters and professionals would flock in and the whole local feel of it will dissipate).

I'm not sure where the millennial thing came from in the article either, it's like they smushed together two articles, one about the event (which was an all ages event) and another about consumer trends changing among millenials 🤷

Anyway I apologise for my foul tongue and even worse, my negativity. I'm finding S&B almost unbearably moany at the moment but that's no reason to join in.

LadyEloise1 nothing really leapt out at me on that site I'm afraid, maybe because there seemed to be loads of dresses which I'm not particularly into at the moment. Or maybe I need to see it in real life.

I'm very close to choosing my new glasses! It seems to have taken forever which is slightly less than it'll take to pay for them. Then I'm moving on to shoes as I think I've toppled over that fine line between knowing what I like and being in a rut.

I enjoy a good Floisme diatribe! I guess every generation re invents the wheel. But I agree the millennials can come across as a bit self referential.

Ahem <-- imagine that in millennial pink 🧐 (also, whilst I'm grumbling in fake outrage, why are gen x-ers always spared from the generation wars?)

Hmm, yes, S&B is currently overrun with the same recurring trolls again, silly me for thinking they had found somewhere more exciting to be their true cantankerous selves. I kind of avoid opening certain threads by their title ATM because I already know what it's going to be like.

Ooh, is your independent glasses shop still around then Flo? Must admit you make the process sound like you're getting tailoring with several fits to get it just right. (Although I remain forever confused how you can pick glasses with limited eyesight. My mother always dragged me along and her eyesight wasn't even that bad).

I love dresses @Floisme. I wear them all the time.
I rarely wear separates.
I thought some of the dresses were lovely on that site but I don't live in the UK so would want to know about the quality as they are pricier than my usual day dresses and it can be a faff returning stuff when not living in the UK.

I loved the JW Anderson trousers, but I am a sucker for a foldy-drapey detail. The agricultural show reminded me of the only test I failed that term I did uni French - the one for what they called "realia" which means, like, "about France" but not history. I couldn't learn it because every single departement had some milk production, some beef production, some bla bla bla. It all sounded the same in the end.😭

Red, I'm so pleased for your leather skirt!

I borrowed a very interesting book at the library once about regency fashion: Dress in the Age of Jane Austen. Same author - is it two different books on the same subject? Must read the other one too. How can anyone sensible dislike Jane Austen. Bo, Bo, Bo.

I am sorry, but Rier is black, white and beige and an annoying website. I just cannot. I do lack imagination in this respect, I admit that.

Pleated trousers are the bane of my existence. It's so popular now, my theory is because it's an easy way to make the trousers seem "tailored", but they are so poorly made most of the time that the trousers don't fit well unless you are very very very very very thin indeed.

Micro, that is a very nice slipover you got there. I wouldn't mind that in a colour. Not beige. I'm sort of looking second-hand but no luck so far.

Shang, those are nice trousers, but sometimes the waist is just a centimetre to high/low to feel just right. Did you find a way to make them work for you?

Sorry that I'm laughing at your academic misery, Bani, but that's so French 😂

I never claimed to be sensible, so I guess that explains the Austen disinterest. Probably best not get me started on the Brontë sisters, there's enough discord in the world already...

You know what I don't understand about pleated trousers, whenever I pick up a random pair of men's, so long as the pleats are the right direction, they're pretty much always good. Not a perfect tailored fit, that I can only find in women's but that's a rare find but the majority of women's pleated trousers are just wrong somehow 🤷

Anyhow, what I came here for, Zac Posen has been appointed to reinvigorate the Gap portfolio (so that's the Gap and all those other brands). Considering what they did with the Banana Republic x Peter Do collab I'm curious what this will lead to as there definitely is a vacancy for better quality well designed mid to high end of the high street. At least I think we can still get those Gap brands here through Zalando (just not that BR x PD collab 😞), otherwise, scratch my initial excitement. Off topic, Zac Posen's father is a somewhat well known painter and I really like his work.

You know what, I'd forgotten all about Gap and it was my favourite shop in the world at one point long ago. I'll watch that closely.

Yes my opticians are still around bo, praise the Lord and they're as saintly and good humoured as ever. As for being able to see what you're buying, well phone cameras have made the world of difference but the frames still look different again once the lenses have been fitted so I never know for sure if I've paid the right choice until the last fitting. So I'm still dithering but closing in on some from Etnia Barcelona at the moment.

It might be worth asking about that brand on a dresses thread LadyEloise1 - lots of very committed dress wearers who know their stuff.

I think Hilary Davidson's written a couple of books bani and the Regency period is her thing so I'm guessing they're different publications. I'm sure I saw she was doing an online talk somewhere but can't remember where now - V&A possibly.

I'm far less precious about the Brontes than I am about Jane Austen although I do think Jane Eyre's a cracking read. I dread to think what one of them would have done with the plot of Pride and Prejudice but it would have probably ended up a melodrama about a widow and 5 daughters thrown out of their home.

Yes, Jane Eyre is the only Brontë worth it, IMO (which is worth little since it's only Wuthering Heights I've tried). I love Jane Eyre.

God that French textbook. I might still have it somewhere. Desperately trying to remember at least SOME of the places that possibly had some sort of identifiable industry. I'm rubbish at geography and names as it is.

Gap has never been my think because Swedish, so it doesn't hold a place in my heart. But it could have had, had it been here, I surmise. We shall see!

Of course men's trousers are better Bo. Why are you even surprised.

Bani, I'm mostly surprised because body wise I'm a lot closer to the template female used for pattern making than the template male. Obviously men have it easier as there's not that much variation among them and I'm coming more and more to the realisation that mass market clothing is not that different from medicine whereby women get treated as a man with some added curves. It's not that dire but if you look at pattern and dressmaking historically, a lot of female knowledge has seemingly not made it into modern production, where a bit of stretch covers a lot of sins. But on the other hand, women aren't expected to be making clothes for themselves, their five children and usually the husband too. Plus all the mending. And probably knitting, so you know, can't be too angry about it either...

If you ever find that textbook, please do share, it sounds delightful.

We never had Gap here either, but you could get it in France and I loved going there as a teenager but it was considered a really expensive brand there and among my peers it definitely had status comparable to Calvin Klein and similar but it was definitely more affordable in the US (Banana Republic was the one considered bougie) and the quality also seemed less somehow. I think it was more down to the US having wider stock and pushing the cheaper stuff there whereas in mainland Europe it was more pitched as preppy, the French staff were also always really proud to work there. The UK stores were somewhat in between, from memory, similar limited stock but also some of the year round promotional items (which by law you couldn't do in France and I think Germany where there were also shops iirc).

Anyhow, yes, I'm cautiously optimistic, I was never a huge Zac Posen fan (just not very suitable for my lifestyle) but I can definitely see him being a good addition there potentially. There was an interesting documentary about him some time back, just around the time he was forced to close down his own brand. Might have to do a rewatch.

I had some lovely things from Gap when they were first in UK and BabyGap/GapKids helped keep my son well-dressed when he was little, including this gorgeous jacket by Stella McCartney that Carla Bruni wore - kicking myself that I didn't think to buy myself a larger size when I bought him his.

archive.nytimes.com/runway.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/31/cool-condensed/

But then it lost its way and things were vastly overpriced initially so they could screen 'Massive Reductions'

I have to say, I have always disliked Jayne Austen and all the Brontes.

I'm not sure why we're supposed to like them.

I dutifully read all the 'classics', I see they're of their time, they never spoke to me though.

I prefer science fiction, if you really want to drill down into what it means to be human, it's more interesting to consider a different situation rather than use nice words to consider the status quo.

And there are science fiction writers who use words beautifully, I think they are sometimes maligned because it's seen as genre fiction, an so lesser.

Probably, Mies van der Rohe was considered genre architecture, Jean-Michel Basquiat was considered genre art and Paco Rabanne was considered genre fashion.

I do not get 'classics'.

I don't know if there's all that much to get really, other than whether or not you think they're cracking good reads.

I just love a good story.