This is an article by Ellen Wallace in the August 1982 issue of Cosmopolitan that the Dead Fleurette posted recently (that I think is still very relevant today) about what makes the French so darn chic. Enjoy!
Oui…Parisians always manage to look fantastique — even in “les blue jeans.” Jet with us then to cafe-lined boulevards and learn about French fashion flair!
The one thing they don’t tell you in travel brochures about Paris is the first thing every visitor notices: People stare. They stare at you; they stare at everybody. And everybody stares back.
My first taste of this phenomenon terrified me. I was wearing an overloaded backpack and a wrinkled black dress, which I had slept in on the train. My mascara was mostly on my cheeks. I wanted desperately to be inconspicuous, but there they were, all those terrible suave-looking Frenchmen I had heard about, staring right at me. I wanted to melt into the sidewalk! There was also no way to avoid noticing something else: Those French girls look better than we do. Of course, the mysterious allure of the French woman is nothing new. She has been the target of love, lust, and intrigue in hundreds of books and films. Remember Gigi, that innocent heartbreaker? And Edith Piaf, the enigmatic, real-life heroine who stunned the world with her gutsy love songs? Not to mention the quasi-Parisiennes — protagonists of a dozen American novels who left home frumpy and meek, only to return from Paris a year later ravishing and self-assured. After devouring those stories, I could never quite give up the notion that a few months in France and — voila! — I would be magically transformed.
