Six
Never Wear Stripes in Paris: Faking It in the Snobbiest Cities on Earth

Jerry Hall claims to have taken Paris with nothing but a suitcase full of cocktail dresses, a tube of red lipstick, and a leopard-skin pillbox hat. In 1989 I assumed I could do the same. I arranged to meet my best friend under the Eiffel Tower at midday. I was wearing black lace stockings, raccoon-style eye shadow, a black leather miniskirt, cherry red ballet slippers, a striped T-shirt, and red lipstick. Lots of it. I ran into the shadows beneath the legs of the tower with my arms open, screaming with joy. We embraced and jumped up and down on the spot, our backpacks bouncing. We were twenty-three years old in the city of eternal love. We had escaped Australia. We had made it! Karen was also wearing masses of mascara, biker boots, thick black tights, and a beret. Strutting arm in arm up the boulevard Saint-Germaine we could not understand why the sleek young men were ignoring us and why two French girls dressed all in bourgeois beige, with blond highlights in their chignoned hair, were hissing, “Les punks! Les Anglais!” Karen started to cry. I couldn’t decide if I was defiantly enraged or just mortified. I had seen Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless and studied the exact angle of Jean Seberg’s push-up bra and kicky black eyeliner. But none of that mattered. We were punks; we were bumpkins, that made us pumpkins. And despite our revolutionary stance, we were a long, long way from the Bastille. Sacre bloody bleu.

In subsequent visits to the capital of style I tried hard to put a foot right, but there was always something amiss: a pencil skirt too tight across the derriere, a pair of red Louis-heeled shoes that looked weirdly secretarial, some Chinese satin bedroom slippers worn with a black cocktail dress, a comic experiment with a beret, and always that damn striped T-shirt. Anyone with real style knows that the last place to dress like Pablo Picasso is in Paris. I understand fashion, I have studied it inside out, but it took me years to penetrate the heart of European chic. I put this down to my stubborn love of loose ends. French women don’t wear red lipstick in the day. They are rarely given to comic touches like bow ties and bowler hats. And they (with the exception of Jane Birkin, who is English) don’t do scruffy. Even their linen wrinkles are calculated to effect. Le safari!

In my fourth decade, I’d like to say I still don’t care. I’d love to have the gall to simply walk down the Champs-Élysees like punky, spunky Agyness Deyn in her Doc Martens and bright pink socks, thumbing my nose at all things bon chic/bon genre. But hard experience with grumpy maître d’s has taught me the value of refinement.

Having the right clothes when you travel has an unwitting way of saving you money and smoothing your path. Firstly, you do not make the mistake of rushing out to “buy” sartorial acceptance in the form of a Balenciaga bag or blazer. Secondly, you can slink into a café not speaking a word and get a table, some food, and perhaps a lover with a few flourishy hand gestures. And thirdly, you gain the confidence of looking like a traveler rather than a tourist, a massively important distinction when you come from very far away and want to be anything in the world except—gauche.

The Chameleon’s Suitcase

Whether you are backpacking or on a business trip, everyone arrives in Europe on a personal budget. Even coffee is an investment in the right café in Venice. So the idea that one can simply shop a new look isn’t for the wise. My journalist girlfriends who attend the collections are expected to rub shoulders with the fashion elite yet subsist on relatively small magazine salaries. Their trick is to wear deceptively simple (and mostly chain store) basics but make strategic choices for their accessories and their palette. Most fashion chameleons have a base uniform (see my little beige dress in the illustration on the next page) that changes with the season and the city. The same logic can be applied to the ordinary traveler who is not likely to have to sit front row at Dior but who doesn’t want to feel like a bush pig when window shopping on the rue de Rivoli.

Before I leave for a destination that gives me serious style anxiety, I log on to the marvelous www.thesartorialist.com to study all those artsy, snobby, fabulously fashion-damaged people who get it just right; and then I have a good hard think about how my own, very real clothes will perform: folded, wrinkled, bending, running, and standing still. If I need a few new things to tweak an outfit, I sniff round vintage, large chain, or designer discount stores for accessories and shoes. Especially shoes, as they need to be comfortably broken in prior to all that walking one does when visiting miles of museums.

PARIS

The French have this damning word: charge. It means, basically, “too much.” And in the case of Paris style, anything can be too much. Lipstick and eyeliner worn on the same face. A dress worn with the belt it was sold with. A blouse with too many buttons done up. Imagine the opposite of Miami … and you have Paris. All the sex appeal is in the austerity, the proportion, and the concentrated devotion of making one good sartorial choice and working it to the hilt.

Chic, in the hardcore sense of the word, always looks spare, like something has been removed, refused, or rejected. So if you wear a dress, just wear that dress. No necklace. No bright handbag. No kicky candy-colored espadrilles. Just a dress and perhaps a basket with leather handles and some flimsy little sandals. And if you wear a white tuxedo shirt and linen trousers, wear it with two bamboo bracelets and a dusting of gold eye shadow and a big men’s watch. That’s that. Parfait.

LONDON

Quintessential British style is the perfectly pale convent-girl skin with rose-colored lipstick and a tartan skirt. And a black bra under a sheer white blouse. I pack for London like a librarian going on a sex holiday: with very tailored skirts, tight sweaters, and very naughty knickers. This is the one city in Europe still in touch with the sixties, so as long as you have a mac—a sexy horsey-looking mackintosh, or trench coat, in navy—a pair of very high leather boots, and a wild mane you can get into any club and take up space in the Ritz lobby all afternoon long. Wear the boots in summer with a sheer floral dress. Or trans-seasonally with a trapeze-shaped knitted minidress and a massive cashmere wrap. Hit the high-street shops like Topshop and Zara for cheap fashion-forward basics, and then invest in one or two British classics like a kilt, a pair of real Wellington boots, or a Lulu Guinness handbag. Then absolutely fake the rest. British style is so steeped in perverted tradition that the squarer you look, the kinkier you feel. Unlike France, this is the country where you can dress like the queen (cable-knit cardigan, kilt, and riding boots) and still look hot.

CAPRI

Okay, so who do you know who goes to Capri aside from Plum Sykes? I present Capri as an example of any terrifying snobby resort destination, from St. Bart’s to Palm Beach, from Mykonos to the Shore Club, Miami. Resort style is an unwritten uniform of suntan, jewels, skinny sandals, and the right floppy hat and caftan. I think you can pretty much fake everything on this list with a trip to Daffy’s and a bottle of Jergens, except for the sandals. In Capri, Sophia Loren and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis bought their sandals from a cobbler called Amedeo Canfora, at his little shop of the same name. I’d do the same, except I’d buy them a month before flying (online at www.canforacapri.com) and scoot around the house in them, as proper paper-bag princesses don’t wear Band-Aids.

Another trick to looking like you didn’t just trip off the cruise boat is to hand wash your caftans and sundresses so that they are relaxed and not starchy stiff. Also avoid any item that is bright bleached-white (cream, ivory, and pale honey look better). Shiny resort clothes look cheap. Linen, with its dull matte surface and weight, looks more elegant than cotton Lycra. Instead pack one very well-made linen shirt or caftan and wear it with very crisp trousers and a pair of Tod’s. The trick with Euro-resort style is to look sensual rather than sporting. The preppy ideals of collared T-shirts, khaki shorts, Madras plaids, and colors such as watermelon and lime just don’t work as well under a southern Italian sun. Sneakers, Bermuda shorts, and baseball caps are pretty much illegal in southern Europe anyway, as they should be! And I am not taking an anti-American stance here: just try and imagine Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday dressed à la Bill Gates. You can’t live like a goddess if you are dressed like a Boy Scout!