Paris in Love: A Memoir by Eloisa James
The homeless man is gone. He packed up his tent and whisked himself away in the night. I hope he has found his way to somewhere green; I would like to think of him meditating on grass rather than concrete. I paused where his tent used to be and realized that it had been positioned on top of a powerful heating vent. No wonder he looked so comfortable, even in the depth of winter.
I’m writing a book about small theaters in London during Shakespeare’s time, and I came across this lovely reference: in 1555, a quite powerful man named Sir Thomas Cawarden, who owned much of the fashionable area of London called the Black-friars, wrote a lease agreement for one Elizabeth Foster. The lease gave her lodging “for the terms of her lyffe by the yearly rente of 3 odoriferus Flowers.” By comparison, other people were paying upwards of thirty pounds a year, a huge amount at the time. The romance-writer part of me finds this contract both intriguing and agreeable.
I went to visit a friend in the 16th arrondissement today. She walked me back to the Métro stop, Porte Dauphine, and pointed out a glass canopy over the entrance that looks like a large, colorless peacock tail. Apparently, it is one of the few original Art Nouveau entrances left in the city. All that transparent glass arcing above the door seemed almost confrontational, as if to assert that this is not the door to the Underworld; Cerberus does not wait beneath.
Grades posted! We were afraid Luca might be remanded into the two-week remedial courses doled out to those with low grades. But no! He has worked incredibly hard this year to master Latin-into-Italian translations, geometry explained in Italian, and interrogazioni in history (routine complaint from teacher: “your facts are right, but your sentences aren’t complicated enough”). Not only did he pass but he did very well indeed in some subjects! He appears to have a real gift for literary analysis (ahem).
I woke to silence and took myself out for a jog. Paris is moody, cool, and empty early in the morning. On my way home I found fruit sellers arranging artful mountains of apples, kiwis, and pineapples, like anxious (but artistic) squirrels stacking nuts for a long winter.
I finished Claude’s memoir, which concludes with a rather awkward imaginary interview with the writer Anatole France. The parallels between my great-uncle and me are remarkable. We both went to Harvard (I must give a nod to the tradition of legacy admissions here), moved to Paris, wrote memoirs, got emotional about French light, and wrote novels that were not admired by the literary establishment. Not only that, but we both wrote opinion pieces for The New York Times, though his was on Italian politics and mine was on the term bodice-ripper. And we did all of this almost precisely one hundred years apart. I called up Alessandro in Italy to inform him that I might be possessed by the ghost of Claude C. Washburn, but he merely snorted.
Milo is going on a thinning cure! Alessandro will be in the mountains while the children are in camp, and he’s talked Marina into letting him take Milo with him. Marina packed Milo’s red velvet pillow, his special dishes, his special coat, his special towel, and his special blow-dryer, and sent them off, admonishing Alessandro to keep him dry because the veterinarian says he is very, very sensitive and may get rheumatism if he’s not coddled.
I spent yesterday at my computer, occasionally reaching over and savoring pieces of the chocolate shoe that Alessandro and Luca gave me: a touch of vanilla, an undertone of cocoa, a moody aftertaste. Silence, no cross teenager or needy eleven-year-old—and a whole shoe to eat!
I just spoke to Anna, who called from camp. She told me, in a tone of pious virtue, “All the kids say swear words in every sentence. I can’t tell you anything else because it would be tattling.” Then, without pause, she added: “You know what Luca’s doing? He’s teaching his group American swear words—the really, really bad ones!” That’s my boy … taking every opportunity to convey the finest aspects of American culture to his peers around the world.
Yesterday I encountered a line in front of a store selling British clothing—at 75 percent off. Naturally, I joined it. At the door I was handed a huge bag; inside, people were stuffing their bags with garments like ravenous pigeons scurrying after crumbs. In the end, I couldn’t face the checkout line, and besides, I had lost a skirmish over a pale pink trench coat to a feral French woman. I slunk away, offering a weak smile to women still waiting in line outside.
Today Luca called from camp. His group has five sixteen-year-old boys and not a single girl his age; the oldest girl is thirteen. Six more campers arrive tomorrow: five boys and one more girl; he hopes fifteen or sixteen years old. “I’m the tallest,” Luca told me, “and I score more than anyone at handball.” Despite these potent factors, I gather he is unsure of winning The Girl. I just hope she’s actually interested in boys.
After much sniffing, I have decided on my favorite French soap. It’s made by a company called Resonances, and sold at Galeries Lafayette Maison in big blocks that you cut in half. It’s scented with vervain, which I had to look up; it’s a wildflower also called “herb of grace.” The scent reminds me of lemons and wind-dried laundry.
I’ve been longing to check out the consignment-clothes scene in Paris, so I made my way to Réciproque, which has separate stores for men, women’s evening clothes, women’s designer clothes, and gift items. I tried on several Dior suits (all too expensive, but fun to wear, if momentarily), and then I decided I could afford a pale blue flowered Dior silk shirt. Hanging in my closet, it looks like a peacock among molting chickens.
Walking through the 7th arrondissement this morning, I looked up to see the Eiffel Tower at the end of the street. The city was so foggy that clouds completely obscured the tower’s lower half; what was visible above the haze looked like the turret of a complicated, very dangerous submarine, emerging from a foggy sea. In fact, when the Eiffel Tower was erected, in 1889, there were widespread worries that it would alter the weather, and bring thunderstorms to the city. I suddenly understand the fear.
ON FRENCH WOMEN, AND WHETHER THEY GET FAT
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 experienc
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
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.