What Does It Mean to Be French?
L'OFFICIEL, La Parisienne, and the allure of Paris style: one writer unravels the definition of Frenchness through its historic parallels with fashion.
What does it mean to be French? Everyone will have their own opinion, but, historically, certain ideas and images, places, and people have had a profound influence on the sense of national identity. Among these are the city of Paris and the idea of Paris as the capital of fashion, revolution, and modernity. For over one hundred years, L’OFFICIEL has contributed significantly to the creation of this "aura," which belongs uniquely to Parisian fashion.
Founded in 1921, L’OFFICIEL was the official publication of the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne. By enhancing the prestige and profitability of couture, a halo was cast over all French fashion and luxury products, not to mention tourism to France. Thus, a central theme in nearly every issue has been the assertion that Paris is synonymous with high fashion, and especially couture.
L’OFFICIEL’s original Editor-in-Chief, Dominique Gaffory, firmly believed that it was only in France that the art of couture could flourish. In a 1923 front-page editorial article, "Paris, Capital of the World," he described how American, English, Brazilian, and Spanish women all flocked to Paris, which they regarded as "Paradise on Earth." According to Gaffory, whenever a woman from another country wears French fashion, "We must salute her," he declared. "She makes propaganda for us. Yes—address from Paris, which floats in the breeze of New York or London, is a little bit of France."
”Why Paris? Why always Paris? Why Paris alone?” demanded a 1958 article entitled “A Universal Empire.” “It is a question of taste, that is to say, the quintessence of culture.” Culturally, French good taste was often associated with its aristocracy, as well as its heritage of skilled artisans. Indeed, the aristocrat and the artisan had long had a symbiotic relationship, with Parisian modistes dressing the courtiers at Versailles. Milliners, like those depicted in Degas’s paintings, were described at the time as the “aristocrats of the working class.” Or as L’OFFICIEL put it in 1950, in the center of Paris, “Generations have accumulated treasures of cleverness, invention, and savoir-faire.”
The French woman, especially embodied in the mythological figure of La Parisienne, has also long been regarded as a beacon of perfect taste. As a constructed symbol of Paris fashion, she is also credited with an innate personal style that accentuates her beauty and charm. “The Parisienne could be Françoise Hardy or Charlotte Gainsbourg,” declared the English designer, Paul Smith. “Elegant, her allure belongs to her, and has nothing of a studied fashion look.” Also quoted in “Esprit de Paris” (2000) was French designer Sonia Rykiel, who said: “I am not a Parisienne. I am a French woman living in the most marvelous city in the world: Paris.”
Indeed, as early as the 19th century, French writers had begun to affirm that at least some provincials and foreigners who spent time in Paris and wore couture became, in effect, a type of Parisienne. The idea of the foreign Parisienne has since echoed through pop culture. A 1989 photo essay “Parisianisme,” for example, had subtitles such as “Une Americaine à Paris.” In “Paris 75006” (2000), Farida Khelfa of Azzedine Alaïa was described as “a true Parisienne,” while Carla Bruni was said to be “the most Italian of Parisiennes and the most Parisienne of Italians.”
By the 1890s, with the rise of haute couture, the Parisienne had acquired a competitor: the couturier. Admittedly, discourses about creativity have been centered around the couturier, often inspired by his muse, the Parisienne, although he was also inspired by the city of Paris. In an article on “Yves Saint Laurent and Paris” (1990), L’OFFICIEL rhetorically asks: “How can we imagine one without the other?” Saint Laurent, “a young provincial dreamer”(shades of Balzac), fell in love with Paris, where he met “the quintessence of woman that we call La Parisienne.” In a vocabulary that links fashion, art, and eroticism, we read that Saint Laurent’s designs exemplify “chic” and “allure,” the fetish words of French elegance.” Also in 1990, a cover depicted the words: “Paris Lumière/Paris Mystère/Paris Mon Coeur,” signed Yves Saint Laurent. This testimonial to the City of Light, mystery, and love (“Paris my heart”) is central to the magazine’s ideology.
The centrality of Paris and France in the discourses proliferating in L’OFFICIEL is exaggerated throughout the 1920s, in the difficult aftermath of the First World War. Here a sense of nationalism, protectionism, and patriotism emerge with articles carrying titles such as “Fashion in the service of France.” Unlike many other fashion publications, L’OFFICIEL continued to be produced, and in 1942, in the very depths of the war, an article focused on the inspiration that Paris still offered its couturiers: “To create, always create, to be inspired by all that Paris contains the beautiful and the good, to abandon oneself to the influence of the inimitable atmosphere which bathes the capital ... is the incontestable privilege of our great luxury industries.” In the post-WWII article “Paris Retrouvé” (1948), the writers joyfully proclaimed that “Paris is refound on the world’s stage in its role as capital! ... Refound is the Paris of thought... the Paris of elegance and taste ... the Paris of gaiety ... It is the unique Paris of the sweetness of life.”
This new birth of Paris and couture blooms in the pages of L’OFFICIEL, which begins to imaginatively use the spaces of the city to reaffirm the fashion centrality of the City of Light worldwide. The magazine had always associated the city of Paris with its most iconic structures, but in the 1950s a new style of glamorous night-time photography emerged, in which models in couture gowns posed in front of sites such as the Place de la Concorde, Notre-Dame, and, of course, the Eiffel Tower. By the late 1970s and ‘80s, under the influence of Guy Bourdin and Helmut Newton, fashion photography became increasingly eroticized, and we find in L’OFFICIEL images of women standing at night on the street in front of the Arc de Triomphe and the Place Vendôme, not to mention on the bridges that span the Seine. "Ca c’est Paris.” “Paris, on t’aime.” The Paris-centric titles and images continue.
The triumvirate of ‘French,’ ‘Paris,’ and ‘fashion’ has long been associated with the female figure, and, while this has historically reinvigorated both stereotypes and national constructions, it is today shifting and redefining itself. This is happening, again, through the central image of the Parisienne. Despite its mythological figure having been at the center of many critiques, the Parisienne certainly continues to exert a powerful influence on global ideals of femininity becoming more inclusive, with Black, Arab, and Asian women featured. The Parisienne “incarnates a mythic woman,” declared L’OFFICIEL in 2000. “She has allure,... attitude, presence, and a look. Creative, she interprets fashion with insolence and airiness. The entire world admires her legendary chic ... The myth lasts because the Parisienne has become plural. There is no longer one Parisienne but many... To each, her own.
An edited excerpt of Valerie Steele’s text from L’Officiel 100: One Hundred People and Ideas from a Century in Fashion by Stefano Tonchi, published by Marsilio. Available now.
