I Thought French Style Was About Clothes

Before I moved to France, I thought French style lived somewhere between a navy trench coat and a perfectly tied silk scarf, with impossibly clean white sneakers carrying the whole operation along as though they had never once encountered mud, gravel or an overenthusiastic Labrador.

It all looked wonderfully effortless.
I assumed, rather confidently, that becoming French was simply a matter of
buying the right things.

Which, in hindsight, is a wonderfully American way to misunderstand France.

It started with the sneakers.

Les baskets.

They seemed to be everywhere. White. Spotless. Timeless. They drifted through village markets and café terraces without so much as acknowledging the existence of puddles. I became convinced there must be a secret French law requiring them to be cleaned every evening with a toothbrush, a soft cloth, and a profound sense of national pride.

Meanwhile, I was wandering around Dordogne wearing what I considered a perfectly respectable outfit, only to discover that "casual" apparently means something very different once you cross the Atlantic.

At first I thought I simply hadn’t bought the right shoes. Then perhaps I needed a better jacket. Then a scarf. Then, inevitably, another scarf.

There is a dangerous moment for every foreigner in France when you become convinced that assimilation is just one purchase away.

It isn’t.

That realization arrived one Saturday morning at the village market. I found myself standing behind a woman who must have been well into her seventies, wearing slim jeans, a soft cashmere sweater and white Stan Smiths so immaculate they looked qualified to perform minor surgery. A few metres away, a man was buying blood sausage in a camel coat and aviator sunglasses, looking less like someone running errands than the lead detective in an exquisitely slow French crime drama. Even the children seemed suspiciously well put together, dressed almost entirely in earth tones and what I can only describe as inherited confidence.

Then there was me.

A raincoat from REI. A backpack with one zipper too many. A single croissant flake clinging heroically to my collarbone. Somewhere along the way I'd managed to look less like an American living in France and more like a woman who had taken a wrong turn on her way to a hiking trail.

Only later did I realize I wasn't looking at clothes.

I was looking at a language.

The more I watched, the more convinced I became that there had to be rules. Not written rules, of course. France would never make it that easy. These were the sort of rules everyone else seemed to absorb in childhood, while I was apparently learning something much less useful.

People looked as though they’d just wandered out to buy flowers, entirely by accident. Nothing matched, yet everything belonged together. Hair appeared gloriously unconcerned despite almost certainly costing more than my first car payment and at least forty-five minutes of strategic nonchalance. The overall effect suggested they’d spent no time getting dressed at all, which I slowly realized required an astonishing amount of time.

I began collecting advice.

Just wear black.”

Reasonable enough, except I quickly discovered that dressed entirely in black I resembled an intern at Chanel’s funeral.

Let the clothes speak.”

Mine did. Unfortunately, they spoke English. Usually something along the lines of, Machine wash cold. Tumble dry anxiety.

Then came my favourite.

Don’t try too hard.”

That ship had already sailed, capsized, and sunk somewhere off the coast of Brittany, wearing sensible orthopedic sneakers.

So naturally, I doubled down.

I assembled what I believed to be the perfect French capsule wardrobe: a striped shirt that prompted one cheerful neighbour to ask whether I’d recently taken up mime, cropped navy trousers that left me wondering if I’d accidentally bought the children’s version, a beautiful wool blazer that nearly caught fire beside the wood stove, and a silk scarf I tied with such spectacular incompetence that a six-year-old quietly fixed it for me.

I bought the white sneakers and cleaned them with almost religious devotion. I abandoned my oversized tote bag in favour of one of those tiny crossbody bags capable of carrying exactly one breath mint, one aspirin, and perhaps a deeply personal secret.

For a few glorious days, I was convinced I’d finally cracked the code.

Then I sat on a bench with a chocolate macaron.

The back of my pristine trench coat never recovered.

Neither, if I’m honest, did my confidence.

But somewhere between the stained trench coat, the impossible sneakers, and my increasingly theatrical attempts to blend in, something unexpected happened.

I stopped paying so much attention to the clothes and started paying attention to the people wearing them.

That’s when I finally understood that French style had very little to do with fashion.

It wasn’t about owning the right jacket, mastering the perfect scarf knot, or even keeping impossibly white sneakers spotless. It was about moving through the world with quiet confidence, buying bread, chatting to the butcher, or carrying flowers home without ever looking as though any of it required effort, even when it undoubtedly did.

I still don’t dress like a French woman.

I dress like someone who tried very hard to dress like a French woman, eventually gave up halfway through, and bought cheese instead.

Honestly, it’s worked out rather well.

Because here’s the thing I got completely wrong.

I came to France thinking style was something you wore. It turned out to be something you noticed... and something you slowly grew into.

And somewhere between the sneakers and the cheese, I stopped trying to dress like the French...

...and started feeling a little more like myself.

Has a country ever taught you something about yourself you weren't looking for? I’d like to hear from you in the comments.

Introducing Contributor Jenny Becker

Visit her Contributor Page — Explore more of Jenny’s work→

Share

Thanks for reading MyFrenchLife™ – MaVieFrançaise®! This fabulous article by Jenny Becker is public, and we encourage you to share it.

Subscribe now

MyFrenchLife™ – MaVieFrançaise® is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.