Don't answer that: it was supposed to be rhetorical.
So, I made a point of noticing the fashions and looks. The French are famous for being tres chic, especially Parisian women, mysteriously so. The lore is that they can make anything look fabulous, and I was determined to spot the secret. Frankly, I didn't see that many examples of the legendary fashion.
Admittedly, we were primarily in tourist areas of Paris (don't judge--it was our first trip there, and we had to get all that out of our systems), but even at the Louvre, or Notre Dame, there were more people speaking French than any other language. So I think it was fair to use the passing population as my hunting ground. And as a whole--not overwhelmingly better dressed than we see Stateside.
I did see a couple of young women who totally had It, whatever It is. The first one I was worked in the Passport Control area of Charles de Gaulle airport, and she was wearing a uniform that was the identical uniform of the other young women working in that area. So what was it about her? She was well groomed--sleek hair, understated make-up--but that was not the source. Could it have been the tailoring? Unlikely; she was wearing a uniform.
After seeing a couple more striking young women, I decided it was the posture. Just something in the way these select few carried themselves made them stand out from the others riding the Metro, or crossing the streets. Tailoring and/or posture: the secret to the French mystique.
Because I was surprised by the casual and ubiquitous exposure of bra straps I saw all over Paris. It was warm and quite humid while we were there, and maybe women had just pulled out the coolest outfits they had. Still, it seemed to me to betray the whole notion of Paris as a center of fashion when easily 50% of the women had visible underwear.
(Not an actual sighting, but a demonstration of the criminal level of mismatch--don't we expect better from the Parisians?)
I was willing to consider that I am just old and cranky, and completely out of touch with youth fashions. You know--"Back in my day, we didn't roll our stockings below our knees! Only fast girls showed their ankles!"
(Gwen and Brit: stylish or slovenly? Is this a fashion development we want to embrace or nip in the bud?)
In London, however, women uniformly kept their underwear under. Scarcely a bra strap to be seen. In fact, while pacing the Kensington High Street on our way to the Tube, the stores offered more ways to wear straps than I had ever seen before. Racer back, halter style, one shouldered--all were on offer and had clearly been purchased because the straps simply stayed hidden. Occasionally, I spotted where women had transparent straps, to avoid the "Walk of Shame" look visible straps convey.
There was a definite "look" in London--very leggy, and all about the gladiator sandals. Even jeans were subtly styled to accentuate long legs: clean straight line, patch pockets high on the rear, worn with short jackets or tucked shirts that made the overall impression of London "Wow--how come their legs are so much longer than other human beings' are?"
I was similarly struck by how many women wore summer dresses. Where here at home we see a lot of jeans and shorts in the summer, in London it was soft floral dresses and they looked fab! Young mums pushing baby strollers to the park wore sleeveless dresses that skimmed their hips and fell in soft pleats to their mid-calves. Literally 70% of the buggy brigade had dresses on--suddenly Laura Ashley makes PERFECT sense.
The fashionable men wore pin striped suits that were brighter than their American Cousins. I think it was that the stripes contrasted more than they do here, they were also slightly wider and farther apart than is usually seen in the US. Ties were fatter as well, and shoes were noticeably pointier.
After nearly two weeks of decoding fashions, I finally sat down in our flat and picked up one of the Trinny and Susannah books from the collection in the sitting room. Trinny and Susannah, for those of you who don't already know, are the originators of "What Not To Wear," a series that originally ran on BBC, spawning books and the US series.
I thought I'd look up what they thought about the Great VBS (Visible Bra Strap) debate.
I looked at the cover and saw. . ."Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine." Wait. Wasn't "Woodall" on some stuff in the flat? I opened the book, and on the title page, in unmistakeable spiky handwriting "To Mum and Dad. . . ."
OMG OMG OMG! It turns out? We were staying in Trinny's mum's flat! Now there's no way I can just wear jeans and a t-shirt here either!
(Fortunately, I didn't have to. Guess we were staying in the fashionable area of London, huh?)
(While I don't have the definitive Trinny and Susannah position on VBS, in their book Ready To Dress they recommend having fancy bras so that if they show, they look nice. Not an absolute faux pas, but not an unqualified acceptance either.)
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