The day before I left Chicago for Paris, I bought a pair of white Adidas sneakers. My suitcase was already packed and bulging: Breton stripes, black cashmere, two turtlenecks, a leather jacket. For months I had been cultivating a minimalist wardrobe in neutral tones and autumnal shades of burgundy, and my haircut kept inching shorter towards a wavy Audrey Tautou bob. I was determined to harness a tiny corner of that untamable je ne sais quoi that characterizes French style.
The fashion blogs that I had been following all told me that the secret to French style is to appear effortlessly chic. The Italians have a word for it: sprezzatura, a studied carelessness. French style (if one is willing to admit the Eurocentric essentialism of the phrase) has to do less with trends than with timelessness, a polished minimalism on which ethical clothing ventures have been quick to capitalize.
In my research (which was really just online shopping and dissertation procrastination, but let’s call it research), I came across a number of prescriptive rules. For the French, accessories rather than clothing itself are the realm of individuality, so I acquired a fabulous Fossil crossbody bag that just screamed “Left Bank intellectual” and scoured EBay for a pair of Timberland ankle boots to replace my disintegrating Aldo booties. The French value quality over quantity, so I invested in a pair of Brass ponte pants and asked for an Everlane cashmere sweater for Christmas (both pieces were well worth the investment, by the way). After reading about the history of la marinière, its classic navy stripes supposedly representing each of Napoleon III’s twenty-one maritime victories, I briefly considered splurging on an A.P.C Breton top. But I came to my financial senses and bought some UNIQLO seamless underwear instead and had two-dollar Clark Street tacos for dinner.
There was an undeniable allure to the idea that with just ten, twelve, twenty wardrobe essentials, I could buy a kind of aesthetic belonging, the privilege of fitting in. I was finally making enough money to start consciously investing in clothing, and the illusive promise of ethical consumerism in an age of mass consumption appealed to me.
Fashion had not always been such an important part of my self-image. Growing up lower middle class in a homogenous area of rural Ohio meant that my clothing options were basically limited to whatever Kohl’s or JCPenney happened to have on sale. I agonized over my appearance, of course, as all teenagers do, but really what I wanted was for my clothing to be the least interesting thing about me. I wanted to stand out by virtue of my mind, not the fabric draping my frame.
It wasn’t until I moved as a college freshman to Avignon, a medieval city in the south of France, that I understood how fashion worked as a kind of cultural currency, a wordless way to signal one’s belonging in a particular group or class or country. I was visibly out of place in my threadbare Chuck Taylors and my loose department store jeans, and I desperately wanted to fit in with the elegant French women in fitted blazers smoking cigarettes on café terraces. I was rapidly falling in love with France.
It was in Avignon, too, that I discovered the subtle femininity of the Chanel silhouette. Anne Fontaine’s Coco avant Chanel was showing at the Utopia, with the inimitable Audrey Tautou playing the film’s slender-hipped heroine. I began dreaming of expressing my androgyny in pearls and loafers and slim black trousers.
But clothing wasn’t just a means of fitting in; soon it became a second skin to protect myself from the apparent danger of standing out, of looking like I didn’t belong even though I spoke perfect French. In the span of two weeks, I was twice sexually assaulted: once by an acquaintance of an acquaintance in the women’s restroom of a bar on Place Pie, and then, violently, by a stranger on the sidewalk outside of a now defunct nightclub on the road that leads to Carpentras. My body had been violated, and the only way I knew how to reclaim its integrity was to control the narrative of its physical appearance. Like Greta Garbo haunting New York in an oversized trench coat, horizontal stripes and ballerina flats allowed me to feel invisible in a crowd.
Clothing became a kind of armor, yes, but also a screen onto which I could project a desire for belonging, a longing for integration, a sense of feeling whole. There is no solitude like that of a suitcase. For the better part of a decade, I have been shuttling my belongings between cities—Athens, Avignon, Nice, Pau, Chicago, New York, Paris—leaving a trail of outgrown relationships and discarded garments in my wake, perpetually paring down my possessions to the bare essentials.
It is a source of personal pride to be able to carry my belongings in two hands. But sometimes I miss having those flamboyant yet utterly impractical articles of clothing in my closet—the gold-sequined bodycon dress, the white snakeskin heels, the pink lace pencil skirt—the ones I could never justifying packing for a transatlantic stint. So my suitcase becomes a distilled version of myself, at airport regulation size.
The white Adidas sneakers were an afterthought, unnecessary. They didn’t fit in my suitcase (literally), but I wanted them. I wanted to wear them with my Everlane striped tee dress, or a pair of dark jeans and an Express boyfriend blazer. And that’s the elusive secret to French style, after all; it’s not about specific articles of clothing, or playing with proportions, or sticking to neutral colors and patterns, but having the confidence to wear what you want to wear, and walking down the street like you belong.
Solitary City 