Story by Linda Donahue Having grown up in the American Northeast, Dani Baron has seen more than her fair share of cold winters. So she’s no stranger to all the seasonal bearing of scarves and hats—the accessories necessary to staying warm when temperatures plummet. But during the two years she lived in Paris, Dani felt like “a complete failure in the winter fashion department,” as she recalls.
“There’s something so effortless about how the French wear their knit scarves in the winter,” says Dani. “And no matter how hard I tried, my scarf just wouldn’t sit right. I can speak French fluently and with a nearly flawless accent, but my scarf was screaming ‘I’m American!’”
Dani also discovered that, while she could easily adapt her fashion sensibilities to that of French women, there was something else she failed to master. “I don’t know what it is about women in Paris, but they move in a certain way that’s so effortless. They command the space they’re in, and it’s more than just confidence. It’s like they have an innate knowledge that they just own it.”
Sophie Delon, a native Parisienne, says that this perception is a cultural one. “Yes, of course French women move differently than American women, but I’m not certain that ‘confidence’ is the right word.” While French women have insecurities, like any other women in the world, we have simply been raised to keep them to ourselves.”
And therein lies the magical mystique of French women. It isn’t just that they know how to dress or move. French women just don’t feel the need to reveal everything about themselves to new friends or beaus.
“I was in New York for a wedding and met, for the first time, a cousin of the bride,” shares Sophie. By the end of the evening, she had told me about her marriage, her divorce, her boyfriend, her kidney stones, the fungal infection she endured after a pedicure and even about her brother’s marital problems. It was a bit too much for me.”
Dani Baron, had the opposite experience while living in Paris. “My husband and I spent a great deal of time with one of his French business associates and his wife, and after a year, I was surprised to learn she’d been battling breast cancer the entire time. Had she been an American friend, I would have known about every detail of her treatment.”
So do American women share too much? Can we benefit by using some of the restraint shown by French women? Would that enhance our mystique?
French women might think so, but Gerard, a 32-year old Paris-born lawyer disagrees. “Many of us Frenchmen find the openness of American women to be quite enchanting.”
I think it’s a default reaction to living in Paris, regardless of the season! We could buy the same brands, the same articles of clothing and do everything in precisely the way French women do it, and we’d still be miles away from matching the grace and effortless elegance of our fashion icons. I’ve had trouble reconciling this as I’ve been living in Paris but at the end of the day, my husband chose to marry an American, not a French girl. That’s got to mean something, right?
I’m banking on the “find the openess of American women quite enchanting” line! There is a difference and I’m not sure I could ever in a million years close the gap. I’m going to settle for being happy with who I am, in Paris and at home.
V
Well, I’m an Aussie, and I find American openness ( they call it being upfront and honest) absolutely overpowering. On a flight from Denver Colorado, I was regaled by another passenger with full details of his 3 excruciating divorces, battles with his in-laws, diseases, alimony payments, problems with his kids, etc etc. A woman on the opposite side volunteered stories of her abortions, and how she held funerals for the foetuses. That was my first day in USA, and it was a true cultural shock. I eventually understood that this is normal in the USA, but I just could not do it in return, so I was thought snobby and standoffish, when in fact, I had Australian reserve about deeply private things.