Fashionably Tard

To the left: an enterprising young gentleman, dressed in the latest haute couture, ready for a night on the town.

Here's my initial critique of everyday French fashion. Just as my homie S, herself an actual real-life French person, told me before I left, French men dress basically like American gay men. I have found this to be largely true, but not because of any kind of effeminate affectations - French guys do not, in fact, carry purses - but because they're simply far more polished than American men. There's this slovenly thing American (straight) guys do that just doesn't seem to happen over here; think of all the American frat boys with boxers hanging below their shorts, the six-day shadow, the pajama pants on the street, falling-apart jeans, etc. Here, you get a lot of nice clothes in nice repair that aren't dumbed-down with affected slopiness.

This is a funny cultural thing, because if I were to dress how I've been dressing here at home, I'd feel silly. When you see a guy in unnecessarily formal attire in the states, you immediately wonder if he has a job interview or something. It's like we in America want to advertise our accessibility, our groundedness, our lack of pretension, and we do it with wrinkly t-shirts w/ Mr. Bubble on them. Here, it's just not an issue of pretension, it's an issue of common-sense seriousness: it is safe to assume that any guy you see on the street has something to do and somewhere to go, and he dresses with that in mind. He's doesn't pretend that he didn't think about what's in his wardrobe.*

En revanche, I am bewildered by French women's fashion. What I mean is that it's so subtle, the differences so unpronounced (except that you basically never see anything straight-up ugly), that I can't characterize it at all. Except that, as mentioned earlier, French women wear heels a lot.

* I just dropped a double-negative bomb on your asses.