Paris Was Ours (15 page)

I was too rebellious to be terrified. Besides, I knew about chic. Well, I could recognize it even if I could not yet personally express it, clotheswise. Antonia Fraser, my mother, helped matters. In the public eye and much photographed, she had a clear image of herself. Her cupboards were spare. “Endless choice confuses” was her style philosophy. She wore only dresses by
Jean Muir but was zany with jewelery, sporting prominent rings and necklaces, often made of lapis lazuli or coral. She believed in being different. Two of her girlfriends—Diana Phipps and Grace, Lady Dudley—also had strong, individualistic taste. Both were tall, both wore Saint Laurent, and although their styles were incomparable, whether they were wearing wool crepe, taffeta, or velvet, it always looked effortless. My mother and her two friends understood their bodies, were womanly, and brave: three essential ingredients in achieving chic. Yet it was from attending a convent school that I really learned the most.

I thought then, and continue to think, that nothing is as elegant as a nun’s habit. On a daily level, the sacred sisters instilled the importance of discipline, from learning to make beds with hospital corners to collecting that week’s laundry in designated hours—or facing the consequences. The nuns were tough and unforgiving about sloppy behavior. So are Parisians. The sacred sisters’ rules and regulations were perfect preparation for braving the City of Light.

I also possessed personal pluck. After I moved here, a famous director, a playboy ex-boyfriend, and an heiress girlfriend all separately decided to fly in and treat me to expensive restaurants in order to give his or her version of the following advice: “You’re penniless and will never survive in Paris.” I went from being surprised to being hurt to gratefully remembering something my late father used to say: “An adventurous spirit tends to irk others.”

Fortunately, Parisians find an adventurous spirit intriguing. In general, they are too canny or conventional to be fearless themselves, but they do notice courage. Just as they dismiss
someone who apologizes too often as being victimlike, they are quietly amused by someone with character who doubts their rules and dares to do otherwise. Not that they are big at handing out bravos—power animals, they recognize the need to withhold—but when dealing with foreigners, they respect authenticity. They will admire someone more for being authentic than for playing at being Parisian.

STILL, THEY ARE
deeply unwelcoming. Or politely put, they are born cynics who lack an Anglo-Saxon’s curiosity about strangers. On that level, I was not remotely prepared for moving to the City of Light. I had jumped from London to Los Angeles with great ease and, obviously, with even greater ease when leaving the West Coast for the East. But Paris, it paralyzed. The daily humiliations I encountered until I realized that the accepted protocol is to bite back! How the endless
non
s morph into a honeyed
oui
when you stand your ground! And learning to accept the acerbic humor even if it stings! Imagine asking a middle-aged man for directions—it was my very first day—and being served with, “Mademoiselle, do I look like a map?”

Although accustomed to licking my wounds in private, I never felt compelled to pack it all in and leave. Instead, it made me determined to dig in my heels further. To win over the chic savages was impossible, I reckoned. But to find a comfortable even ground remained a goal.

OF COURSE,
I had been warned — “Paris is great apart from the people” and other tired sayings. I was determined to see otherwise. Why be negative about a race when you are attempting
to live alongside it? Besides, I had held a good opinion of the French since primary school. Traumatized by being the only nonacademic sibling in a family of high achievers, I was wary of all my teachers apart from two women—both French and called mademoiselle. One, who taught me from the age of five, cast me as the huntsman in a school production of
Snow White
because I had “such a kind heart” (said with an affectionate ruffle of my mousy brown hair).

The second entered my life when I was eleven. She had almond-shaped eyes, a broad smile, and in the warmer months favored a pair of thick gold slave bracelets pushed up high on her toned arms. Considering she taught in a convent, she had quite a racy reputation. The
on-dit
was that she had slept with a woman. Or was it a threesome? The details were irrelevant. Mademoiselle was above reproach in both the nuns’ and pupils’ eyes—appreciated for her excellence in the classroom and her personal charm and flair in the school’s drafty corridors. Whether she was wearing a skirt or a dress, there was an appealing urgency to her presence; her firm limbs seemed to dance with each step.

Were her clothes chic? I recall earth tones and the occasional imperial purple or royal blue. They made less of an impression than the nuns’ habits, which were a case of holy couture, a lesson in precision. There was the immaculate fit of the starched white wimple, the flowing black veil firmly pinned on either side, the short, capelike bib covering the chest, the creaseless waistband, the flawless pleats, the large button at the back that allowed the nun to hook up her skirt when major movement was required.

The nuns’ appearance trained my eye to the fall of fabric, to
the many shades of black, and to the elegance of a crisp white cotton collar and cuff set against a somber shade.

When I worked in the Chanel studio—it was my first professional job in Paris—I had little idea that Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, the fashion house’s founder, had been convent trained. Thinking back, it makes perfect sense and explains why the color palette and air of devotion at work in this couture house felt dimly familiar. In the studio, during sessions with Karl Lagerfeld, my fellow assistants, and the seamstresses from the ateliers, I gleaned endless tips about fit and accessories, both key tools behind gaining chic. Yet in spite of this, and unlike a heroine from a Nancy Mitford or Diane Johnson novel, I did not leave transformed.

There were many reasons, but the main one had to do with lacking attitude and forgetting that chic lies within. I also did what no self-respecting Parisian does: I focused on my shortcomings and suffered from an “If only I lost
x
pounds” syndrome. Desperately, I aimed to please. I sought out the opinions of people who knew the contours of my body less well than I. My style lacked fluidity. Dressing for me was a potluck scramble. I had a mild case of style schizophrenia: there were accomplished hits, there were dowdy misses, but nothing quite gelled or clicked. It was only when I was commissioned by the British version of the fashion magazine
Marie Claire
to write a meat-and-potatoes-type article on how chic Parisians were buying middle-range labels that I had my chic watershed and found the right key for my particular lock.

Suddenly, I could see the forest for the trees. It had only taken me nineteen years! For the first time, I observed how elegant Parisians
d’un certain âge
shopped. It was equivalent to
watching a military operation in action, with the women playing sergeant major and casting the racks of clothes as soldiers on parade. They tried on T-shirts as seriously as jackets. Sour disapproval appeared on their faces when a skirt did not fit; they were always convinced that it was the fault of the design as opposed to their bodies.

They refused to get lost in the fuzz of fashion. Ignoring the advice of shop assistants, they stared long and hard in the mirror. The concentration and considerable time they took, I realized, was not about vanity. It was an essential part of a complicated process in which they worked out if they needed an item, if it did them justice, and more. Often a good half hour would go by before they simply handed the garment back. Such behavior might be deemed thoughtless but, actually, these women were only interested in being thoughtful to themselves. Feet squarely placed in the present, they bought what they would wear immediately. Flights of fashion fantasy were clipped midair as opposed to being purchased, cast aside, and eventually given away.

In short, the “slap” was there in full force—particularly in their ability to resist the gushing compliments of the shop assistants. I could not help admiring how directed they were. Their decisions seemed to be guided by an inner chic compass—the Parisian’s secret weapon! They never lost sight of themselves, were curious about clothes, yet remained liberated from their constraints. And they never indulged in victim behavior. They were happy to move forward with a different designer or label—but only if it showed them to maximum advantage.

My favorite discovery from all my hours of changing-room Nosey Parker behavior was in recognizing how much chic
is personality based. Since chic forgives flaws and favors the positive, size turns out to be irrelevant. The secret to acquiring chic, I learned, is to correct negative thinking. The overall message? All is possible with strength of character and a little practice. Chic demands, above all, patience and discipline. I have learned from living in Paris not to count on miracles but to depend on both those elements to make things work.

It’s My Home, That’s All

Sunday, November 23, 2008

When I began this blog last September, it was just to describe what the three of us were living from one day to the next. I originally planned to send a letter each week to Daniel Vaillant [mayor of Paris’s eighteenth arrondissement] to describe to him in concrete terms what it’s like to be homeless, because I had the impression that, at the mayor’s office, they simply had no idea. And then I told myself that this exchange of letters … would end up in a pile of files. I thought that [by sending them in quantity] I would be more likely to receive an answer from the mayor’s office … It was my brother who suggested that I write a blog about my situation. I hesitated, I wasn’t sure that I wanted everyone to read my life … And I couldn’t at all see how people would even come across it … I was far from imagining the scope it would assume!

I have to say that I’ve felt really beside myself in these last days. I needed to step back a bit. I received so many messages of support, suggestions, offers of help, advice, encouragement! People have offered temporary shelter, help with moving, little tips to make the children feel good, gifts of clothing. People have even offered to take care of the children! People have
written to me from all over the world, men and women from every social class, parents or nonparents, former homeless people, grandfathers and grandmothers, students, even adolescents who have said, “I’m only twelve years old but I find it revolting [that you can’t find affordable housing].” I would really like to be able to thank all of you. It’s incredible that so many people are touched by our circumstances. You can’t imagine how comforting it is to know that we are not all alone!

I also received a lot of other offers from the press, radio, and television. For now, I’d prefer not to follow up. My priority right now is to find a place to live and to take care of my children. I began this blog with that urgent goal and I’m going to continue, but I don’t have time to do more than that, and I don’t want to expose us [to the public eye] any further. Some people wanted to make me into a kind of oracle for the homeless. But I don’t see myself in this role. I don’t have the soul of a spokesperson, that’s not me at all. Of course, I would like what’s going on now to be useful to those who, like us, need a roof. But everything I can do, I’m doing through this blog. A few publishers have even suggested that I write a book! That really made me laugh—it’s a bit much.

On the other hand, I did agree to meet a journalist from a show called
Arrêt sur images
, which airs on the Internet, but it was for a written article that appeared on their site. Their approach is different. The article talks of the solidarity that was created by the “blogging mothers” and attempts to trace how that movement was formed. I swear I was interested in understanding it myself! What was funny was that the journalist found the first person to link my blog to hers (called
La mare enchantée
), and it turns out that I know her very well, but she
hadn’t let me know what she was up to. If this turns out to be true, then everything has happened because of her …

I also saw that there has been some debate on that blog and apparently elsewhere. I suspect that this is inevitable when one is the subject of an article that’s at once personal and public. I don’t need to respond to this often badly informed criticism, but I do want to clarify two or three things that might have been ambiguous in the article about us in
Le Monde
.

First of all, the article leads you to believe that I had a “job” in Bordeaux that I had left to come to Paris. In reality, I was training at a stable, and we had one week of school for every two weeks of internship. I worked like this in the stables for four years without being paid. When I left Bordeaux, ten years ago now, it was at the end of my training and I had no work. When I arrived in Paris, I began to earn a living doing parttime jobs.