Une Femme Française: The Seductive Style of French Women
240
Une Femme Française: The Seductive Style of French Women
240eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
All American women aspire to have the nonchalant style and grace of French women, that je ne sais quoi that makes all of their habits seem natural and effortless. In Une Femme Française, fashion designer Catherine Malandrino, a Frenchwoman who has lived and worked in the US for twenty years, reveals French women’s secrets for an American audience.
Grab a café crème and learn:
- To be your own creation, not a slave to the latest fashion
- What defines une femme Française: the little black dress, the boyish look, the rebel touch, and the carefree attitude
- The secrets of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the avatar of American women who admire the French
- Hair- and skin-care tricks from Paris It Girls
- That nonchalance, more than perfume, is sexy
- How to seduce anyone
- Why red is a necessity
- The real reason French women don't get fat: food is family
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781250097668 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 11/14/2017 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 240 |
| File size: | 43 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
French women don't talk about "having it all," or checking things off a list. They aspire to have "it," a charm, a quality, an attitude toward seduction, style, and confidence that will make life and everything beautiful.
There is one woman who represented a blend of French culture with American idealism in her marriage to her husband, and in her own style and personality: Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy.
From a young age, she was drawn to European culture. At Vassar, Jackie majored in French literature. During her undergraduate year in Paris, she studied art at the Sorbonne and become fluent in French, later translating French texts into English.
In the White House, Jackie hired French interior designer Stéphane Boudin to redecorate and chef René Verdon to cook state dinners of her favorite cuisine. (In later years, her taste for carré d'agneau bouquetière and haricots verts almondine had her lunching at New York society bistros La Côte Basque and La Grenouille.) When she and her husband John visited Paris in 1961, Jackie charmed Parisians and Charles de Gaulle with her style and intelligence. President Kennedy felt a bit overshadowed by his wife, and he jokingly referred to himself as "the man who accompanied Jackie Kennedy to Paris." During that visit and for two years after, she used all of her powers of persuasion to convince reluctant French officials to allow a grande dame of Paris — the Mona Lisa — to travel to Washington, D.C., for a historic visit at the National Gallery.
Not a legendary beauty, Jackie's chic Francophile style — the feminine hair, clean lines, and romantic rounded necklines — made her a fashion icon. French-born Oleg Cassini created most of her couture wardrobe of satin pink gowns, cashmere coats, and bright dresses, but she also wore Chanel (like the pink suit she had on the day JFK was assassinated), Givenchy, Dior, and Hermès. During the White House years, the "Jackie look" was the A-line skirt, three-quarter sleeves, kid gloves, pillbox hats, a three-strand pearl necklace, and gold and enamel bracelets by French jeweler Jean Schlumberger. But my favorite era was when she lived on Fifth Avenue and wore wide-leg trousers, white jeans, turtlenecks, trench coats, head scarves, and her ubiquitous black sunglasses, lending her a French air of mystery despite her very public life.
Over the years, she proved herself in every realm, as a diplomat, mother, lover (she allegedly had affairs with Warren Beatty, Paul Newman, and Frank Sinatra, among others), and in her career. Perfectly balancing American casualness and competence with a French style and flair, she set trends and captivated people all over the world. I grew up admiring this dignified survivor. She reinvented herself after John's death to have a second life with Aristotle Onassis, and a third life as an editor at Viking and Doubleday. Her journey was intense, with fascinating chapters. She's an example of an accomplished woman who grappled life with style.
Confidence, style, and charm aren't birthrights even for icons or movie stars. They have to be developed for women to reach their full potential and become successful. Through my experience of living in America for twenty years, I've built a bridge between Paris and New York. Today, I want to share what I've learned about our differences and similarities.
Girl from the wood
I grew up in Seyssinet-Pariset, a small town of twelve thousand people, located on the outskirts of Grenoble in southeastern France, one hour away from Lyon. My parents came to Grenoble when they were very young, when their parents, involved in the resistance, followed the dream of freedom by fighting dictators' ideas (Mussolini in Italy, Franco in Spain). After leaving the Mediterranean, my parents grew up, met, and married in France and raised their four daughters in the European way of life, happily at the foot of the French Alps.
I remember my childhood in colors. The blond hair of my Andalusian mother, the dark eyes of my Sicilian father, the pink cheeks of my sisters. Outside, it was a winter world with white peaks along a chain of mountains cutting into a clear blue sky right outside my window. The scheme changed in springtime, with all the hues of greens in the pines and the grass, sprinkled with a confetti of wildflowers: violets, red poppies, yellow buttercups, blue irises. In summer, I remember the rows of red roses in the gardens that surrounded our two-story house, and a wood swing that hung from a pink- flowering buckeye tree that later dropped golden-brown nuts on the ground. In the fall, the foliage turned brilliant orange, and then, by November, my world turned a peaceful, pure white again.
I was a little French Heidi and spent more time outside than in. The Four Mountains — part of the Vercors Massif range where World War II French Resistance fighters hid from the Nazis — was my immense playground.
Every Sunday, my family set off on a day trek, a gang of six en vadrouille. I wore oversized jeans held up by one of my father's wide leather belts, a long-sleeved men's shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and boots with crampons, my long hair tied messily. I always carried a basket and a knife in case I found anything worth keeping.
As soon as we hit the trail, I tended to run ahead on the steep footpaths to the streams where we hunted for frogs. My parents always shushed me when we spotted a family of marmots — fat mountain squirrels — but I couldn't contain the excitement and screamed. The animals would scatter and disappear. Higher up the mountain, we'd spot deer and chamois — a cross between a goat and an antelope — or nesting hawks. Beyond the tree line, I was looking for edelweiss, the white and yellow mountain flower, growing vertically in the cracks of a rock face.
My love for nature will always keep me grounded. Because my roots run so deep, I can safely let my head drift into the clouds.
Four gifts that shaped my life
Looking back, I see how much my parents' guidance and encouragement made me who I am today. They have been my beacon, the lighthouse of my life. She taught me to feed my curiosity and to pursue knowledge and skill. They were never bossy and didn't tell me what to do. Their education style was to suggest, to guide gently, to throw seeds on the ground and wait to see what grew. In hindsight, I realize how receptive my parents were to all of their daughters' sensibilities. I was born with an intuitive sense of style, but thanks to my parents' encouragement — and their gifts — I developed it.
1. The Globe. When I was six, my parents gave me a globe for my birthday, and along with it, the keys to the world. As much as I loved my family and the healthy lifestyle in Grenoble, the globe ignited my imagination and I couldn't stop dreaming about the different people and cultures beyond the mountains.
I was obsessed with it, and also mystified. If this globe represented the planet we lived on, why weren't we falling off it? My older sister kept saying "The Earth is round," but that didn't help. One day when my mother saw how preoccupied I was by the question, she brought me an orange, delicately picked up an ant in the garden, and put the insect on the fruit. The ant kept running around it without falling off while she turned the orange, and I looked into my mother's eyes, relieved. I will always remember her smile when I finally understood Galileo's discovery. Falling headfirst into the sky off Earth would not be an issue. Once I understood that, nothing would stop me from discovering the other side of the globe.
My curiosity about foreign lands started by a closer examination of the world around me, specifically, of the women in my everyday life. They dressed with casual ruggedness — warm knit scarves, chunky sweaters, and sensible slacks and shoes, to be ready for a day of shopping or trekking on the mountain. The women of Grenoble were sporty, practical, and didn't seem to care about the romance of fashion, or, more likely, they just didn't know about it. Their exposure was limited. Grenoble didn't have any designer or couture stores and there was no Internet back in the '70s.
However, some of them made an effort — certainly my mother, who had a feminine casual style — and I started noticing the distinctions: a woman's perfume, my cousin's see-through blouse, my aunts' makeup. I appreciated the little touches that made a woman stand out. I didn't know it as sexy or seductive at that age, but I definitely clued in to the effect. I noticed men's style, too, a debonair hat or trench coat, a suit fabric that was more sophisticated, a cashmere scarf — all these details were pure attraction for me.
Curiosity was a way to escape my environment and open new doors of the imagination. I knew that a bigger, fuller, more urban world of style existed, where women dressed to emphasize the silhouette of their bodies, where elegance was prized over practicality. I'd heard about Paris style from my mother. She used to describe the city to me, promising, "We'll go there soon. You'll love it. The history, the art, the museums." I desperately wanted to go to Paris and see how people lived and dressed in the capital. I started wondering what it would be like to make clothes and dress the chicest women all over the world. I'd never heard of a career called "fashion designer" at this time. I just knew that I wanted to be actively part of the glamorous life. Going from French Heidi in Grenoble to les maisons de couture in Paris was not a common path. I certainly wasn't born with any connections in the fashion monde. There was no logical reason that I'd grow up to have a life of style in Paris and beyond, but I dreamed about it anyway with the conviction that I'd make it happen.
At a very young age, I had the consciousness that Grenoble was just the beginning, the starting point in my life. Even if you're not born in a big city and many generations of your family live in the same place, you're not stuck there. It's your choice to open the boundaries. When the time came, my family was devastated that I wanted to try something else, and said, "You have everything you need right here." But my imagination was too big for Grenoble and my curiosity for discovering the world was burning in my body like a raging fire. The globe had a magic effect on me. It was the gateway to the entire world.
2. The Sewing Machine. My grandmother Mama Manuela had a treadle Singer sewing machine, and it held a place of honor in my mother's bedroom. As a child, I was fascinated by the enormous piece of wood and metal furniture with a moving pedal and spinning wheel. My grandmother had given it to my mother when she was too old to use it, along with other family heirlooms. I didn't care about the jewelry. The sewing machine, a tool she used with so much love, was far more meaningful to me. Grandma could take yards of raw, unfinished fabric and transform them into beautiful drapery. She was skilled at embroidery and knitting, too, and once made a mohair turtleneck of twenty-two colors for me, and a pink crochet bikini I proudly wore all summer on the beach at Saint-Tropez when I was fifteen.
Grandma taught me how to feed the fabric patiently under the needle to make it glide, and how to put the reel with the thread in the shuttle. I took to sewing and could make expert zigzag stitches before I could recite the alphabet.
When I was seven, my mother offered me a sewing machine of my own, a portable Singer that was much smaller than Grandma's. I had never loved any object as much as I loved that little machine. I stayed up late into the night, stitching. Anything that could be put under my needle got sewn. I had no interest in my sisters' maternity games with dolls. My Singer was the only toy that inspired me. I could spend weekends and late nights sewing together every piece of fabric I found at home, from a handkerchief to a piece of velvet and some furry wool, and with it, I was creating my first patchwork of love.
3. The Little Tweed Jacket. With an inner elegance, my mother favored a casual look of light sweaters, well-cut pants, and low-heeled shoes, but she had two garments that were her special treasures: a beige Yves Saint Laurent silk blouse and a navy Chanel bouclé jacket. I'd tried on the jacket a few times and knew instinctually that it was the real thing, a quality piece with its gold buttons and a chain around the hem. I had a fascination for it, and I thought about it a lot.
One day, when my parents went away for the afternoon, I slid open my mother's closet and took out the jacket. I was ten at the time, working on my sewing, and I was curious about the garment's construction. The temptation was too strong to resist.
I took the masterpiece into my room and carefully opened the black silk lining to explore the inside. I traced the stitching religiously and closely examined the four patch pockets' woven trim. I loved the idea that a jacket could have pockets. They gave it a real attitude. I was nervous but thrilled the entire time to discover the jacket's intimate secrets. Sewing the lining back in took me a few hours. I had to stitch very carefully and delicately to hide the evidence of my explorations.
I was only just putting the jacket back on the hanger when the car wheels crunched on the driveway outside the house. My mother had no clue what I'd done, but a few weeks later, I had to confess. The secret burned inside me and I couldn't keep it in. She wasn't angry at all. In fact, she was touched by my appreciation for something she loved. "You should have told me," she said. "We could have done it together."
In later secret missions, I opened up the lining of a jacket of my father's, too, and came to understand the difference between women's and men's clothing. My father's jacket had a lot of facing inside. It was stiff, rigid, and heavy. The Chanel jacket was decidedly feminine. The sleeve fit close to the arm and had a slight natural curve. The interfacing and silk lining were lavishly soft, and the fabric was smooth and as light as a cardigan. The shoulder pads were small and fluffy. So much miniscule stitching went into each handmade buttonhole. But the most fascinating part was the chain detail at the hem, which lent the garment weight so that it hung on the body perfectly, giving the wearer the Chanel allure.
4. The Biography. Soon after I confessed, Mother brought home a biography of Coco Chanel for me. She was touched by my love for the garment and encouraged me to learn more about it. I read the Chanel book cover to cover, many times. Coco was a marvel, liberating women's silhouettes with unstructured clothes, using soft knits, as supple as skin, from the bouclé jacket, the petite robe noire (little black dress), and the pantalon à pont (sailor pants). She became my role model of style. Her clothes had functional quality and were carrying a message. She was inspired to bring men's pieces into women's wardrobes to give the working women of the time the allure of strength and independence. After falling in love with Chanel, I became addicted to inspirational books. My family knew what to give me for Christmas and birthdays, and my bedroom became an extension of the Librairie Arthaud, the local bookstore, as I amassed a collection of volumes and magazines about fashion, art, and photography.
My First Fashion Library
Any library — or style — would be enhanced by the addition of these great volumes.
• Le Temps Chanel by Edmonde Charles-Roux. It's in French, but what better reason to brush up on your language skills?
• Poiret by Andrew Bolton and Harold Koda. Paul Poiret, a Victorian-era French designer, got women out of corsets and into pantalons. A revolutionary man, he ushered in the modern era of women's fashion.
• Madeleine Vionnet by Pamela Golbin. A biography with exquisite photos about the French designer known as "the Queen of the bias cut," a contemporary of Chanel's, and a pioneer of elegance with softness and movement.
• Yves Saint Laurent by Laurence Benaïm. My favorite biography of the master of style.
• Antonio Lopez: Fashion, Art, Sex and Disco by Roger Padilha and Mauricio Padilha. Don't you want to flip through this book on the title alone? A collection of the works of a Warhol favorite, this book is about Antonio Lopez, an illustrator who was a major force in art, culture, and fashion from the 1960s to the '80s. He discovered statuesque models Jerry Hall and Grace Jones. His sketches were always colorful, vibrant, and full of energy. In his world, even lingerie was in Technicolor.
• Guy Bourdin: In Between by Shelly Verthime and Guy Bourdin. A biography of the late-twentieth-century French fashion photographer and a collection of his bold, surrealistic work.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Une Femme Française"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Catherine Malandrino.
Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
1. Dreams
2. Style
3. Beauty
4. Seduction
5. Amour
6. Inspiration
7. Audacity
8. Taste
9. Joie de vivre
10. Rendez vous