Thoughts on Clothes: A Woman I Saw on the Train Once

So earlier this week I heard an interview with the authors of a book called Women in Clothes. It's about women's clothing, as it may not surprise you to learn, but not exactly the clothes themselves. The authors surveyed hundreds of women about how they choose what to wear and the reasons that drive their choices. Basically, it's a 500 page long conversation about fashion and identity.
Beyond the first overwhelming "I need to read this!" (and I do have it on hold at the library and am so ready to ignore my academic responsibilities in order to read it), the interview made me realize what a great topic clothing-related stories are. At least for me, the sort of girl who can tell you what she's wearing every day for the next week. Clothing takes up more space in my brain and my closet than I would perhaps care to admit, but I'd never really thought about writing about it much.
And so, I am this fine sunny Sunday debuting a new (and probably soon-to-be-neglected) series of blogs on a clothing related theme. The idea is just to tell stories that revolve around fashion, whether it's a story about something I have lurking in my closet, something I almost bought, or (as it is today) someone I once saw and whose clothes I won't soon forget. Explanation done!


If you've ever been to France, you'll know that the stories of French women and their sense of style are not exaggerated. I spent four months studying at a university in France and at the international students' orientation, one of the women talking about cross-cultural differences said to us, "I know, even just looking at some of you now, that people in the street can tell that you're not French by what you're wearing." For the French, I think the idea that you would put some effort into your appearance before going out into public space is pretty much just basic manners. Which seems lovely to me - but then respectability is just the baseline. Even if you, like me, consider yourself a reasonably well-put-together kind of gal, you simply cannot live up to the women striding confidently through Paris-Nord on six-inch heels.

Given all this, maybe you'll understand why I felt just a little bit sad to be in Paris as a weekend tourist with a large and violently pink backpack and scruffy Converse. Someday, I swear, I will live in Paris for a month or  two and I will be able to walk the streets in beautiful shoes and a long glamourous coat. But alas, that is yet to happen.

Do you see what I mean about that violently pink backpack?

If I couldn't be a paragon of fashion, however, I at least did get to gawp about at everyone else's clothes and ponder the joys of a city where people think carefully about what they wear.

I had just arrived in the afore-mentioned Paris-Nord train station on an early morning express train from Lille (the city where I was studying) and had hazily and haphazardly managed to manoeuvre the automatic ticket machines into spitting a slip of paper at me to allow me to take the regional express train into Paris proper. Down, down, down the grimy steps onto the dark and vaguely sketchy platform I went with my fluorescent backpack and my ratty shoes. (Why do the French care so much about appearances of people but so much less about the appearance of their cityscapes? Paris may be beautiful, but its public transit is definitely not...)

OK, so maybe not all Parisian public transport is ugly...

Before I had the chance to become too paranoid on the dingy platform (I was travelling alone), the appropriate train did arrive, in all its shabby glory. I stepped through the battered metal doors into the fluorescent light of a train car furnished with peeling advertisements and seats with heavily abused upholstery and sat down across from a tall, dark-skinned woman wearing one of the more fabulous outfits I have ever seen in my life.

She sat there, surrounded by the intense ugliness of the train, with her head wrapped in a emerald green silk turban, wearing a matching emerald green floor length dress. Gold hoop earrings, several gold necklaces and an emerald ring rounded out the look. She wasn't young. She wasn't old. She looked like she could have stepped out of Diagon Alley. She looked perfect. I had arrived in Paris.

The fact that I can remember this woman I don't know, who I saw once on a Paris train is entirely down to her clothing and my appreciation of it. Seeing this woman and her green magnificence brought the first hint on that particular trip of the sense of enchantment I feel when I'm in Paris. Her clothing reassured me that I had made the right choice to come alone to that big old city despite my little fears and it just flat out made me happy. For me, the memory of the woman I saw on the train in Paris is an illustration of the power of clothing to light up even dull grimy spaces, even dingy Parisian public transport.

Maybe that's not a deep story. But it's a start of what I hope will be more stories to come about red high heels, wool sweaters, men's scarves and all the other wonderful bits of fabric, leather and metal we drape around ourselves.

Smiling 'cause she's so stylish,
Charlotte