Your cart is currently empty!
Why Are We So Obsessed With French Girl Style?
—
by
START
body
Iconic French style maven Gabrielle Chanel once said,”before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off.”
The French girl look fills our Instagram feed with girls with “woke up hair” and no makeup on while leaving us wondering how to achieve such effortless beauty. The French girl style is perfectly undone, it’s chic without trying too hard, and always looks perfectly put together. Though, fashion courses through French veins where the fashion industry has maintained its global influence for centuries. The celebration of elegance and classics are passed down to French girls from their mothers at a very young age who develop a strong sense of style personality without thinking twice about it.
The chic French girl wardrobe usually consists of ballet flats, well-worn leather handbags, basket bags a la Jane Birkin, perfectly-fit jeans, tailored black blazers, silk scarfs, lingerie camisoles for daytime, crisp white button-down shirts, little black dresses (of course), and a signature fragrance to top it all off. The capsule wardrobe has minimal logos, priding comfort as much as style. In terms of coloring, layering neutral tones of khaki, white, camel, navy blue, grey and black. Pro tip: never match your handbag to your outfit.
The minimalistic shapes are timeless that fit the body perfectly with only one statement piece such as a scarf or unique leather bag. It takes extra practice to pair a few versatile basics in different combinations to achieve a flirty-yet-tailored appeal. The French girl style has transcended generations as an appeal of creating a simple, clean look without looking over or underdressed. There is no emphasis on following trends. To the Parisian woman, style is a compliment to the mind, talent, and opinions, something all women wish to achieve as an expression of themself.
Caroline de Maigret, the model and Chanel ambassador wrote How to be Parisian Wherever You Are, to help us all achieve a more Parisian look in our daily lives. The ease of minimal effort to get the maximum results from our audience is appealing to us all. Who else doesn’t want to look put together with ease while embracing our natural sleeves. But the French girls seem to always be a level up in the department of eau natural to other global counterparts such as icons Carine, Françoise Hardy, Jeanne Damas, Camille Rowe, Coco Baudelle, Catherine Deneuve, and Brigitte Bardot leaving us wondering–where does our obsession with stylish French women come from?
The favored look of the je ne sais quoi starts as early as the American revolution. When the United States was a newly formed nation, elite American women abandoned the fashions of Great Britain in favor of their ally, France to proclaim their legitimacy as a new nation. It’s speculated that French Queen Marie Antoinette was the first major It-girl to influence American fashion.
In the late nineteenth century, wealthy American became obsessed with looking to Paris for the latest fashion trends. Journalists from New York were sent to Paris to report on the latest Parisian fashion for American elite.
Gabrielle Chanel’s effortless sportswear further perpetuated the myth of fashionable French women because of her designs that loosened the waistlines, short haircuts, freed their angles, costume jewelry accessorizing, and the little black dress. The designs including trousers, classic Chanel suit, jersey dresses, and nautical tops created an ethic of gender equality because women were not constricted and became associated with elegant workwear women could wear to work quite revolutionary thinking in the 1920s, when women were accustomed to staying at home in constricted bustles, corsets, and girdles.
After World War II, American clientele were some of the top customers in French couture houses. The North-American press, buyers and private customer base flourished as women bought into Christian Dior’s New Look. The innovation Dior created made a fantasy for American women, where the designer later created a licensed copy to be purchased at American department stores. Dior became so big where his designs alone accounted for 66 percent of Paris Couture exports.
The genius of Yves Saint Laurent with successful singer Francoise Hardy sporting his smoking suit with fashion inspired by the Yé-Yé Movement in pop music, French ready-to-wear was all the craze. Saint Laurent’s ready-to-wear line Rive Gauche founded in 1966 proclaimed a new formula of elegance with women wearing the trouser-suits. The essence of wearable clothes sported by French It- girl Catherine Deneuve further drove consumer attention because it was liberating in the feminist movement to wear sportswear separates which Saint Laurent reigned triumphant. It tied feminist ideals with tailored fashion.
The image of the lazy French girl in our heads who is effortlessly cool, perfect style, just-rolled-out-of-bed hair, and smokes cigarettes with perfect skin comes from beloved icons like Brigitte Bardot and Jane Birkin in film later became French fashion influential brand ambassadors long before we knew about influencers and social media. However, social media has ushered in a new generation of chic French It-girls to follow on Instagram like Camille Charriere, Sharon Alexie, Milla Loud, and Jeanne Damas.
The French fashion obsession isn’t going away anytime soon. The Parisian It-girl image is something that has been harnessed by fashion designers for years and has since been cemented as one of the most iconic styles of all time. We continue to chase after the perfect sartorial cocktail to look like an effortlessly dressed French girl roaming along the glowing streets of the City of Lights. While the powerhouse designers of the 19th and 20th centuries cultivated our obsessions with French fashion by adapting the image of the well-dressed French girl, it’s the enduring legacy of French fashion and its pioneers that have given name to the iconic and ever-sought after French girl style.
END
prev link: https://www.crfashionbook.com/fashion/a36506033/why-are-we-so-obsessed-with-french-girl-style/
createdAt:Fri, 21 May 2021 22:57:05 +0000
displayType:Long Form Article
section:Fashion