Paris in Love (57 page)

I just spoke to Anna, who called from camp. She told me, in a tone of pious virtue, “All the kids say swear words in every sentence. I can’t tell you anything else because it would be tattling.” Then, without pause, she added: “You know what Luca’s doing? He’s teaching his group American swear words—the really, really bad ones!” That’s my boy … taking every opportunity to convey the finest aspects of American culture to his peers around the world.

Yesterday I encountered a line in front of a store selling British clothing—at 75 percent off. Naturally, I joined it. At the door I was handed a huge bag; inside, people were stuffing their bags
with garments like ravenous pigeons scurrying after crumbs. In the end, I couldn’t face the checkout line, and besides, I had lost a skirmish over a pale pink trench coat to a feral French woman. I slunk away, offering a weak smile to women still waiting in line outside.

Today Luca called from camp. His group has five sixteen-year-old boys and not a single girl his age; the oldest girl is thirteen. Six more campers arrive tomorrow: five boys and one more girl; he hopes fifteen or sixteen years old. “I’m the tallest,” Luca told me, “and I score more than anyone at handball.” Despite these potent factors, I gather he is unsure of winning The Girl. I just hope she’s actually interested in boys.

After much sniffing, I have decided on my favorite French soap. It’s made by a company called Resonances, and sold at Galeries Lafayette Maison in big blocks that you cut in half. It’s scented with vervain, which I had to look up; it’s a wildflower also called “herb of grace.” The scent reminds me of lemons and wind-dried laundry.

I’ve been longing to check out the consignment-clothes scene in Paris, so I made my way to Réciproque, which has separate stores for men, women’s evening clothes, women’s designer clothes, and gift items. I tried on several Dior suits (all too expensive, but fun to wear, if momentarily), and then I decided I could afford a pale blue flowered Dior silk shirt. Hanging in my closet, it looks like a peacock among molting chickens.

Walking through the 7th arrondissement this morning, I looked up to see the Eiffel Tower at the end of the street. The city was so foggy that clouds completely obscured the tower’s lower half; what was visible above the haze looked like the turret of a complicated, very dangerous submarine, emerging from a foggy sea. In fact, when the Eiffel Tower was erected, in 1889, there were widespread worries that it would alter the weather, and bring thunderstorms to the city. I suddenly understand the fear.

I
came to Paris knowing I had one built-in friend waiting for me: a brilliant, funny banker named Sylvie, who happens to like reading my books in English. Long before we met in person, she used to write me and correct my defective French. Finally, I realized that I could spare myself further embarrassment by begging her to fix the French bits before publication. That changed the author-reader equation; we traded pictures of our children and stories of our marriages. Throughout the year she and I have met occasionally for lunch or dinner, during which I would bombard her with questions about French life. “No, we are
not
all adulterous!” she squealed at me once. Then: “Well, not in the suburbs, anyway.” (She lives in the suburbs, I hasten to add.)

One day we decided to go shopping together—a casual decision that led me to a whole new philosophy about shopping and, beyond that, about dressing. When I’m in a store, I grab a skirt off the rack, hold it up to my waist, and jam it back in place. Sylvie, by contrast, moved thoughtfully here and there, touching
the clothes delicately, as if they might fall to pieces. I took an armful of clothing into the dressing cabinet; she took one suit. When I finally emerged—having rejected the whole stack and put my own clothes on again—she was still in an adjacent mirrored room, conducting a lively forum with a number of store clerks as well as a few other customers.

To my eyes, the suit she was trying on was both elegant and practical, and it looked splendid on her. The shoulders were perfectly tailored, and the skirt flared slightly in the back. However, it seemed that close—
very
close—inspection had revealed that the skirt and jacket must have been made from different bolts of fabric, as they were almost imperceptibly dissimilar shades of blue.

Need I add that Sylvie did not buy that suit?

Although it fit her like the proverbial glove, it was fatally flawed. Sylvie’s standards for how she presents herself to the world did not include wearing mismatched (however faintly) suits. Moreover, she had decided that the skirt’s flirtatious flare, though indisputably à la mode, did not flatter her rear. The experience inspired me with a new determination: to examine Parisian women as closely as they obviously examine themselves. And that resolution, together with my subsequent empirical research, has led to this important announcement:
French women do too get fat
. In fact, they come in all sizes, from very slender to very stout. Here’s my version of the same sentence:
French women, no matter their size, dress thin
.

I suspect that most American adolescents learn how to dress from movies and television. Their style sense imprints at a vulnerable age, just as newly hatched chicks might imprint on a broom—and with equally disastrous results. In my case, it was extremely unfortunate that
Grease
was followed by
Flashdance
.
At one particularly low point, I permed my hair into a red halo that stood out four inches around my head, although I was just astute enough to grasp that skintight leather pants would not flatter my sturdy Minnesota frame. Still, for at least three or four years, sweaters constantly drooped off one of my (chilly) shoulders, and leg warmers added a good three inches to the circumference of my lower legs.

But to return to the more cheerful present, after months as a sartorial secret agent—and a few key conversations with any woman carrying a French passport who would agree to describe her closet—I can tell you definitively that young French women do not turn to Hollywood for instruction on how to dress. Instead, they discover what flatters their particular figure, and they stick with it.

My months of surveillance can be summed up in two words: time and tailoring.

Time? In my case, I’ve been shopping for decades, have a closet and dresser stuffed with clothes, and still don’t have anything to wear—because though I take time to shop, I never give time to figuring out how to
wear
the clothes I bought. What’s more, like those droopy sweaters, they often don’t fit very well. In my next life, I plan to be reincarnated in the kind of body that looks good no matter what I’m wearing; if you’re already one of The Blessed, feel free to skip the rest of this essay. If not, you have two choices, as I see it: (a) fearlessly investigate whether your clothes flatter your rear (and other areas) or (b) avoid all mirrors, storefronts, and female commentary. The second choice has a lot going for it, including peace of mind and a happy disposition.

Still, let’s go back to choice number one. Take a look down any street in Paris and you’ll almost certainly see a sign for a tailor. That’s because it is
routine
to take new clothing to the tailor
and have it fitted. I once had a French academic look at me as if I were out of my mind when I confessed to entering a tailor’s shop only if a hem dragged behind me like a Renaissance cape. It turned out that she wouldn’t dream of wearing pants without first altering the inseam, and the same goes for crucial lines in jackets, dresses, and almost anything but socks. Apparently, even lingerie stores routinely alter bras so they fit properly. Having never got over the conviction that my breasts are too small to be appreciated by women (I know this sounds peculiar, but were I a lesbian, I would definitely be chasing after women with large tatas), I’ve never done the bra-measuring thing. We all draw the line somewhere.

The tailor around the corner from rue du Conservatoire spends his days in a tiny room crammed with piles of fabric and unmended garments. Over the year, I have taken almost all my clothing to him and he has altered each piece. He made a dress hit precisely where it should on my hips, altered shoulders so that they fit
my
shoulders alone, and tailored my pants’ inseams to fit properly. In short, he turned ready-to-wear—prêt-à-porter—clothing into a version of couture, the luxury clothing that is made to a client’s specific measurements.

And he didn’t charge much, either.

It wasn’t until I had spent a few months scrutinizing women—in the streets, on the Métro—that it dawned on me I had never really taken time to analyze which of my garments looked good together. I happen to own lots of shoes; I’ve always considered that one of the best benefits of being married to a man from Italy. Once, to take a regrettable example, I bought acid green pumps with three-inch heels in Rome, because they were chic and on sale. Back in the United States, I threw them in my closet and donned black oxfords day after day. It took some time, but I
recently figured out that those green pumps work with only one dress, which happened to be rather short, verging on mini. Those three-inch green pumps? Off to Goodwill, victims of the fact that I occasionally shop as if I might still go dancing. In a club.