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.
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.
With the family in Italy, no one interrupts me; there are no squabbles; there isn’t any laundry. My academic book grows every day, and my Lose-Parisian-Pounds diet is on track. The problem is, I just can’t sleep. My body knows all this silence and empty space is wrong. The light around the curtains this morning was colorless, like the froth on a wave, as if even that signaled the absence of what matters most.
Today I succumbed to rampant curiosity about Claude’s life, and actually telephoned my uncle Malcolm back in Minnesota. (Malcolm was one of Claude’s nephews.) It turns out that Claude mostly wrote literary fiction, but he tried genre fiction as well; Malcolm recalled, for example, a novella about a paranormal device that turned parts of Duluth into a tropical paradise. Claude’s father was convinced that his son had remarkable literary talent and set up a trust that allowed him to enjoy an intellectual life in Italian villas. (The comparison with my mother is painful, but I’m consoling myself with the fact that if Mom had had the cash, she would certainly have underwritten my literary attempts, whether she considered them deserving or not.) Claude died on a trip to Minnesota, when he went fishing with the author Sinclair Lewis and caught a staph infection. Claude, Uncle Malcolm concluded, “was effete in the sense of outdoor stuff like fishing.” I’ve always hated fishing. I may parallel Claude in many ways, but this last is one I intend to avoid.
This evening I stopped at Number 37 rue des Martyrs, the uninspiringly named Bar le Select. I sat down outside and drank a glass of excellent wine. In the States, I would feel odd drinking alone at a bar, but here it feels absolutely natural. I happily watched poodles and Parisians parade past. I am alone in the most enchanting city in the world, and at this moment, it’s as if the locals strut by just for my pleasure.
Tennis camp finished yesterday, and the kids are in Florence with Marina for a few days before returning to Paris. “I lost the tournament, Mama,” Anna reported last night. Then she perked up: “But I hit my teacher with a ball right in the forehead!”
Today I reached a landmark: I am back to my weight before I encountered the vast and luscious temptations of Paris. And that’s a good thing, because I happened past the atelier of Joséphine Vannier, the chocolate artisan who made my wonderful Cinderella shoe. She also creates boxes made entirely from dark chocolate and decorated in edible paint. They are about the size of small jewelry boxes; I bought one in amethyst, with meticulously painted gold curlicues on top.
Alessandro is now back in Florence after two weeks in the mountains with Milo, who was given no prosciutto treats for the duration, a cruel hardship indeed. Marina counted up and weighed the 80 diet food pellets that Alessandro had been giving him each day and announced that Milo had been starved, because the vet had prescribed 120. Everyone calmed down after Milo was hoisted on the scale and discovered to have lost … nothing. Niente. A sumo wrestler would be proud to have such a metabolism.
I’m going to a big writers’ conference in Florida in a few weeks, and I’m anticipating being cold, because I know the hotel will be air-conditioned to arctic levels. To be prepared, I’ve bought a charcoal gray coat made of crinkly material that you can roll up and shove in a handbag without ruining it. It’s Japanese, frightfully sophisticated—and 100 percent polyester. When I was growing up, polyester was practically a four-letter word.
Since I’m alone, I’m not bothering to cook, and luckily the frozen food store, Picard, sells heavenly heat-and-eat meals. But today I bought a fresh entrée in Monoprix because the esteemed chef Joël Robuchon “made” it. Out of the box, it turned out to be a little casserole in an adorable china baking ramekin.
We are a No-Electronic-Games-System household. Anna called up from Italy, very excited. “Mama, I had a vision!” I inquired about this miraculous event. “I was staring into space, and suddenly I just saw myself playing the new Harry Potter game. The portable one.” Her vision will never become reality, but I do love how she claimed paranormal backup.
I went to the Musée Jacquemart-André by myself today. On my earlier visits, I was accompanied by friends and the audiotape; this time, though, I was responsible for no one’s happiness but my own, and wandered in silence through all the rooms. I am very fond of a marble statue of a little girl rather improbably caressing a dove. Although she’s stark naked, her hair is elaborately braided and fixed with a bow. I love her plump tummy and stubby toes.
Alessandro and the children are back from Italy. We had sushi last night instead of frozen food, and I slept until 6:30 instead of 5:00. Anna has figured out what she wants to be when she grows up—a cake decorator. “I absolutely looove fondant,” she told me. Then she asked whether you have to go to college to decorate cakes. Absolutely. Haven’t you heard of that class? Fondant 101.
The idiotic workmen on the floor above us just loaded a heavy bag of cement into our tiny elevator, causing all the cables to snap. It plunged five floors to the ground and has to be completely rebuilt—a repair that is scheduled to take place in August. After we leave. We’re looking at three whole weeks of four flights of stairs going down, and four flights going up. Hauling groceries upstairs without an elevator is one thing; the idea of moving out without an elevator makes me want to run up a flight and turn into a profanity-spewing American she-devil—the kind seen in foreign films and sometimes homegrown films, too. The Devil Wears French Underwear.
It’s intolerably hot in Paris. My study is a little room sandwiched between our bedroom and the living room. It has one set of big windows, looking directly into the sun. So I drew the curtains. Now the room is hot and dark, like a sauna version of the Bat Cave. I just stripped to my bra and undies, and I’m still too hot to write.
Home from Italian tennis camp, Luca is putting up a strenuous battle against going to the French equivalent. This is all to no avail, as it’s already been paid for, but he won’t stop arguing about it. I know he’s scared stiff, but I look at his cheekbones and remind myself that French women—no matter how young—are connoisseurs of male beauty. He’ll be fine.
Friends Kim, Paul, and Summer are visiting from New York. Summer is a bewitching eight-year-old with the peaked chin and wild laughter of a wood elf—basically, an Anna doppelgänger. Within hours, they were holding hands, wreathing their arms around each other while walking. At bedtime, Anna informed me that Summer is different from other girls. “How so?” I asked. “She doesn’t do what I say.” I suggested that Summer may be even more fun to play with because she has her own ideas. Anna is still thinking this over.
There are places in the world that do not live up to their billing; Giverny, the site of Monet’s blurry, lovely paintings, is not one of them. We are just back in Paris after being enchanted by water lilies with deep pink hearts, poppies with translucent pink petals, cascades of coral roses. This may be heresy, but I think that Monet’s gardens are more beautiful in reality than they are in paint.
Today Anna went to camp, so Kim and I dropped Summer off in a park with her dad while we went shopping. Returning later to collect them, we were met with a forked stick jutting from a mound of earth, pale green leaves flapping in the wind like tiny sails. “A funeral mound,” Summer announced. We looked respectfully at the grave, which turned out to house a deceased Tic Tac. RIP.
Last night our visiting friends took us to a two-star Michelin restaurant, Carré des Feuillants. We began with flutes of rose-colored champagne and white asparagus. I had flaky turbot dressed with a thin line of caviar. The black-on-white effect made me think of a chic wedding cake, but it tasted delicately of the sea, of butter and cream: the very cooking that made Julia Child fall in love with France.
Alessandro hauled Luca, protesting every inch of the way, to Gare de Lyon to catch a train to French tennis camp. In the campers’ designated waiting area, Alessandro overheard another father say something in Italian to his son, but Luca wouldn’t allow him to make contact. “I think he’s embarrassed by me,” Alessandro told me morosely. You think?
We just visited a jewelry workshop, Commelin, which began making charms, by hand, in 1880. Even though it’s not a retail store, they welcome visitors. We watched an artisan creating exquisite enameled squares that will someday become a chessboard. I succumbed, and started charm bracelets for Anna and my two nieces with teeny gold Eiffel Towers.
Paris is so hot that the white plaster walls of the building opposite my study window shimmer, slightly out of focus, as if they belonged on an Aegean island overlooking the sea. We have no air-conditioning, and of course the elevator is still broken. Yesterday the construction workers who broke the elevator smashed one of the stained-glass windows in the stairwell. For the first time, I can think about leaving Paris without feeling a pang of sadness.
For years, Anna’s biggest ambition has been to have five children and live in the suburbs with a new minivan. Whenever she mentions this, she generally throws in a petition for a younger sibling. We have visitors right now who include three children—ages two, six, and eight. Anna just told me that she’s not having any children, ever.
One of our visitors, Damiano, is a six-year-old with Down syndrome who has captured Alessandro’s heart. Walking down the street, Damiano holds Alessandro’s hand tightly. Whenever there are stairs to be navigated, he unfolds his arms upward with a beaming smile, as if he were a sunflower and Alessandro the sun. And my husband melts and scoops him up, every time.
Luca just texted from his camp in the French Alps—the Tour de France whizzed through, and he saw Lance Armstrong! At least, he thinks he saw Lance; it was all a blur. It sounds as if the bicycles were zooming down the mountain buzzing like evicted hornets.
The sun was shining as I went out for a run this morning. I had scarcely entered the door back at home when the sky went dark and rain started to pummel the street. Across from my study it sluiced down the gray roofs, pouring onto hapless pedestrians below, and bounced white off the street.
Alessandro and I just babysat Damiano and his siblings while their parents did some sightseeing. Damiano caught us hugging and decided he wanted to see more. With an impish grin, he kept finding Alessandro and tugging his hand to bring him wherever I was, so Alessandro could give me a hug and a kiss. And then Damiano would climb in my lap to do the same. It was a very blessed afternoon.
Last night, we sat at a café and watched as a gentleman in his eighties asked a young woman if she was the pharmacist across the street. Then he pulled out a condom and asked how much they cost in her pharmacy. Seeing everyone around him grinning, he gave us a smirk (and a figurative twirl of his mustache) and said, “These things are getting more expensive every day! I’m going to her pharmacy, if they’re as cheap as she says.”
Luca called from French tennis camp, which is apparently far, far better than Italian camp. For one thing, there are girls. French girls. Didn’t this salient fact occur to him when he was making our life miserable insisting that he would not go and we couldn’t make him?
Today is rainy, cool, and windy. The sky is silvery gray, like the watered silk skirts of a Victorian lady, long widowed, and still regretful.
I am going to miss French supermarkets. Things I adore: fresh gazpacho and cucumber soups (found next to the orange juice), chicken bouillon in muslin sachets, ditto bouquets garnis, and individual servings of pesto, perfect for quick pasta.
Yesterday I had a little party for my French readers. We had pink champagne garnished with red currants, and pink cookies, and talked about books and children and Paris. And Anna politely chatted with my guests! She did not read, although her Harry Potter book was hidden at her back throughout.