Paris in Love (58 page)

That leads to another important—and potentially painful—piece of advice. Once you have come up with an outfit that looks terrific, you have to be ruthless with yourself about your actual age, as opposed to how old you feel. A few months ago, Luca surveyed my décolletage and apparently found it too low, because he asked me if I was “having a young moment.” Do not let this happen to you. It took me weeks to recover.

So what if you were once a pageant queen or a
Flashdance
junkie? Face it: those days are gone. An eleven-year-old girl can be remarkably handy in keeping this in perspective; Anna, for example, offers her unvarnished opinions quite freely. “I don’t think that looks good on your butt,” she says, stressing
think
in case I want to counter that my bottom has never looked better. “You look like an old librarian.” (Don’t have a live-in eleven-year-old girl, and can’t beg, borrow, or steal one? I’ll rent mine out at bottom rate.)

Put all the clothes that go
with
something else on the left of your closet, and those that don’t on the right. Take every single piece of clothing on the right to a charity shop, and every leftover piece to a tailor. You might not have many clothes, but that’s okay. Outfits are like casseroles—you only need to know how to make a couple.

As a reward, go shopping, online or in person, but only to buy any of these three indispensable items that you don’t already own: a pair of black boots, a rosy scarf, or a belt. Wear the boots in all seasons except summer, the scarf close to your face, and the belt when you’re feeling brave.

I just reread this essay and came to the dismal realization that you’ll run into me on the street and accuse me of rabid untruthfulness because I’m not wearing a belt and my boots are red. Or because I am wearing my favorite sweatshirt, which was rejected by Luca because it is emblazoned (rather obscurely) with the word
SUPERDRY
.

What’s more, you probably think that Sylvie is a model of elegance, sweeping through the bank in spike heels, her hair in an elegant chignon. Not so! Sylvie is the mother of three smallish children with a tiring job that involves long hours. She is not rail-thin, nor does she wear a scarf jauntily tied around her neck, no matter the season. At some point I actually asked her why she wasn’t a fashion plate. She laughed and shrugged. “This is
me
,” she said. “I am comfortable.”

Witness my new (borrowed) philosophy: Sylvie dresses very much like my American friends in the legal and financial professions. But there is a Parisian twist: she knows that her suit fits perfectly and flatters her figure in every possible fashion. Her style has nothing to do with high heels, and everything to do with confidence.

The other day I came across this quote from Miuccia Prada (yes, that Prada): “Being elegant isn’t easy. You have to study it, like cuisine and art.” To be honest, I’m not going for my dissertation in the field. I (and perhaps you as well) will never be a
chef de couture
. We don’t need to be—any more than Sylvie does. All we have to do is give the process enough time and tailoring so that we are true to our own figures.

And then we can admire (if from afar) those Parisiennes who achieve a doctorate in the subject.

Saint Catherine is the French patron saint of unmarried women. Her feast day, November 25, used to be celebrated by working-class girls who would take a day off and don homemade fancy hats and their very best clothing. Supposedly, the parties held on that night were their last chance to meet Monsieur Charmant. Recently I jogged into a tiny park called Square Montholon and collapsed, panting, on a bench in front of a statue of five young women in Edwardian costumes celebrating Saint Catherine’s Day. Rain dripped from the trees and rolled down their cheeks, and it seemed as if they’d been caught in a storm while wearing their best clothing.

The Musée de l’Armée on rue de Grenelle has a lovely formal garden off to one side, made up of paths lined with topiaries shaped into small cones. It looks like the Queen of Hearts’ gardens in
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland:
old-fashioned, elaborately trimmed, slightly askew, and slightly crazy.

The new girl (and five boys) arrived at Luca’s tennis camp today: tragically, she is only eleven years old. There will be no final dance, a highlight of last year. Plus, it snowed in the Italian mountains, so they haven’t even been able to play much tennis. Dreams of both romance and athletic prowess have been smashed.

Anna just called, very excited, to say that she’s bought Domitilla a going-away present: toy guinea pigs that move and squeak, along with their guinea-pig house and their guinea-pig car. Alessandro says that, at fifty-nine euros, the present took half the money she’d managed to save from gifts and her allowance in the last year. I’ve met mothers who told stories of their children’s selfless, generous natures, but I’ve never joined the chorus, for good reason. This is my first such boastful announcement. I’m very, very proud of her.

After a year in Paris, and multiple dispiriting experiences eating criminally bad food, I’ve come to the conclusion that the legendary brasseries—the ones where the waiters wear long aprons and the lamps pretend to be fueled by gas—should be avoided at all costs. The final straw: a friend took me to the Bofinger brasserie, a restaurant that felt about as authentic as Epcot’s version of the Eiffel Tower. (One big difference: the food at Epcot is terrific.) I thought my fish risotto tasted fishy, and after enduring three days of nausea, I’m sure of it.

I just bought six small china ramekins, three pale asparagus and three dark plum, at our local hardware store. They have delicate handles and were made for crème brûlée, but I’m going to make individual lemon tarts in them, and dust them with sugar through a fleur-de-lis stencil—which I discovered in the same place. Hardware stores offer far better souvenirs than tourist shops can dream of; every time you use your hot pink whisk, for example, it will remind you of Paris.

Last night I came down rue Richer at eight o’clock, when the light starts to go golden and the shopkeepers hang out on their doorsteps, ready to lock up. Prancing in front of me was a three-year-old in a candy-stripe dress, white shoes with butterflies, and hot pink sunglasses perched on her head. She was stopping before each shopkeeper to call
“Bonsoir!”
while her mother waited patiently with the stroller.