Is Paris still synonymous with fashion? When my husband and I ran off to Paris for our tenth wedding anniversary, we packed our clothes with care. As chef David Lebovitz points out in his recent food diary, The Sweet Life in Paris, “the unspoken rule if you plan to live here is… that you’re going to be judged on how you look and how you present yourself.” I followed this rule many years earlier on our honeymoon, wearing tailored dresses and blazers all over Paris, and received a warm welcome that proved my sartorial strategy had been worthwhile.
For our anniversary trip many years later, I was determined to have fun with clothes and put together some wonderful outfits, only to see my fashion castle collapse the moment I stepped out of the taxi into the Paris street. As I eyed the hordes of female worker-bees passing me in the Opera arrondissement, all clad in jeans, button up shirts and neutral-colored jackets, I couldn’t help asking, “where has the joy of Parisian fashion gone?”
The drab colors and universal jeans were not to be found just in the Opera arrondissement. Even in the super trendy, expensive shopping areas where fashion boutiques reign supreme, the women’s uniform seemed to be the same. Jeans, grey or black tight-fitting jackets, a non-descript blouse. The only spot of color to be seen at all was the fabulous swathes of scarves that almost every Parisian woman sported like one desperate flourish of color against the bleakness of the conformity.
The street photos are courtesy of:
A wonderful source of street fashion photos.
As you can see, the scarves are fabulous! It is as if the uniform of jeans and dreary dark coats serves only to act as a backdrop for the scarf.
Even the men all over Paris wore huge, flourishes of scarves around their necks, leading my husband and I to feel decidedly out of style.
The one day during our week-long sojourn that I dared to wear a bright colored printed top on the streets, bare-armed, all the pedestrians fixed me with a pained stare, and shopkeepers addressed me for the first time in English. It seems that prints, bright colors, and bare arms are shocking now. To test this theory, I showed my Paris knitting friends a photo of the offending blouse, and they all went off into peals of laughter at the thought of me wearing the poppy print "naked" without a coordinating jacket or cardigan. There was almost no bare skin to be seen in Paris above the waist. No bare cleavage, almost no skin to be seen above the wrists. Short shorts with outrageous tights emphasized sexy legs instead.
Perhaps I just wasn’t paying attention to the evolution of Paris fashion over the past ten years, or perhaps I just didn’t want to know. We Americans like to hold onto a certain ideal of La Vie en Rose, and nothing in our media depictions of France contradicts that. Look at Sarah Jessica Parker’s fabulous Parisian ensemble, designed by Sonia Rykiel for her first day in Paris as Carrie Bradshaw in the final season of Sex and the City:
What could be more fabulous than this confection of black, white and cream , whipped into a froth of stripes and ruffles? This is the American idealization of Paris fashion!
Inspired by the delicious ruffled top, I turned to a Kim Hargreaves pattern, Garnet, to knit up a ruffled Paris tribute of my own. Rather than the black and white color scheme of Rykiel’s, I opted for red and rust.
My favorite part of this ensemble is the way the top harmonizes with the velvet skirt, generously made for me by my mother-in-law. The black lace top, which I knitted last year, draws the eye to the face and breaks up the bulk that could be created by the ruffles in the bust area:
Kim Hargreaves has several versions of this ruffled top, including the Rosa pullover and Effie, a ruffled top knitted entirely in Kidsilk haze. But I don’t think the ruffled pullover style works well on a busty figure. The cardigan, on the other hand, can be worn open, and the vertical line of the open sweater draws the eye up and down, elongating the figure and minimizing the emphasis on the bust.
I am quite happy with how the cardigan turned out, even though it did take forever to knit all the little ruffles and sew them on:
It’s a good thing I did not actually wear this outfit to Paris. I dared only to wear jeans and cardigans on the streets, venturing a bold print top as a sole stab at independence. Ironically, a romantic ruffled top and velvet skirt seem more appropriate for the streets of San Francisco now to me than Paris. The only exciting fashion moment I experienced during the trip was the shawl parade of the Tricot Opera knitting group, who seemed bound and determined to bring some romance back into knitted fashion, at least!
The leader of the shawl knitting challenge, Tima, poses above in a marvelous black gown and purple boa. And another exceptional knitter, Sabine, wearing her lovely orange ruffled top beneath a stunning handknitted shawl, was the first Parisian I had seen wearing such a bold color all week!
The Parisian knitters shook their heads when I questioned them about the direction Paris fashion is going.
“It is all very conformist now," they said. "Gone is the glorious fashion of the 1950s here. No one dares to wear bright colors, no one dares to wear a skirt!” This was sad news indeed. But although
the clothes did not live up to my expectations, the knitters of Paris certainly did! My friend, Sophie, was the soul of kindness and elegance, and the knitters of the tricot opera were so welcoming and fun!
Now I am left with a handmade momento of my trip to Paris, this design of Kim Hargreaves, Garnet. Although it belongs to a different inspiration, this little ruffled bolero, knitted in kidsilk haze, captures the effervescence of my dream of Paris fashion, which perhaps is all that matters after all.