RACHEL WARD’S FRANCO STYLE FILE
So, Paris is done with. I’m moving on and, in reflection, it gets a mixed report card from me.
Poor Paris, like anywhere hyped to the stars, can’t possibly live up to all it promises to be. And, to be honest, there is a part of me that’s pleased to find that underneath all the airbrushing, primping and PR, Paris ain’t so bloody maaarvellous in all departments. Great bones and pedigree, I’ll grant her that, but rather like a grand old dame she’s become a little tired and complacent; a little musty and leaky between the arches.
First and foremost – and this is not her fault, poor dear – the weather is a shocker.
It’s the end of May for Christ’s sake and still the grey skies hang low and relentless, driving dark silhouettes to do bloody battle with wind and vicious plane-tree blossom. I’m afraid it’s no wonder I’ve stalled on winter apparel. The Parisian can do nothing in regard to the window displays of light linen frocks and tiny shorts; it’s a bad joke that gets worse by the day.
This Parisian bloke was stalking me.
Then there’s the food and coffee. Who would of guessed that the French would have so much to learn from zee little kangaroo to which we are still so inextricably linked over here?
The first meal is not inedible but, quelle horreur, it’s the same menu over and over again. Not only that, it hasn’t changed since I was here 30 years ago.
Bloody onion soup, steak au poivre and chips, duck any way you can stuff it or fling it, and crème brulee. And the coffee? After what we’re used to with the choices as long as your arm? Well I don’t know how they dare call it coffee.
Then there is the smell of urine and dog shit everywhere, the queues, the sniffy service and, most alarmingly, the human cost of the economic crisis; large groups of drifting unemployed males and wretched homelessness, including small children, dogs, kittens, rabbits… yeah okay, enough already.
I don’t think I’m well. I think it’s called homesickness.
I am trying to make a film over here at some point so, before my visa is revoked, I will just point out that the Metro is brilliant!
The flowerbeds, (chockers with iris, foxglove, wallflower and delphinium) sublime. The vin rose and baguette are habit forming, the French language musical and egalitarian, (to my ear anyway), the Robert Crumb exhibition, the Pompidou, the fastidiously preserved architecture and the flagrant embrace of all arts and artists, exceptional.
And then there are the French women. As you have seen they live up to all expectation, possessing an effortless elegance and style that I found beguiling and inspiring. Not to mention a generosity and, surprising humility, when asked to be snapped for an Aussie website. Hope you’ve enjoyed the snaps as much as I’ve enjoyed stalking my hapless victims.
Got my biggest crush of all on Martine in her Francois Girbaud jacket. She denied she had French style – only her own style. Voila!
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African-French women have their own distinctive style. Notice that Agnes B is copying this season.
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30 Responses to this article
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Alicia May 21, 2012
Can you keep writing when you come back? Have enjoyed every minute of your posts.
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Josephine byrnes May 21, 2012
Me too!….. Love your Paris installments …..and your particular slant on the world… I’ll keep reading if you keep writing….(provided the rather conspicuous stalker dosnt get you first…)
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Kerrie May 21, 2012
Oh I am so glad someone else has said this too. I was beside myself with excitement to visit Paris for the first time this Feb, a life-long ambition. But, unfortunately, the reality didn’t come very close to my fantasy. Sure, it’s all stylish, very beautiful etc BUT I dunno, I just felt a bit deflated and was actually happy to get back to London where I was staying. I have totally enjoyed reading Rachel’s blog from Paris, I agree with Alicia, please keep writing Rachel!
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JessB May 21, 2012
I agree three (or is it four?)! More from Rachel please!
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Pauline May 21, 2012
I too have thoroughly enjoyed your slant on things. I particularly loved Brian’s red pants. Keep writing!!!
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blue May 21, 2012
i’ve been to Paris once, for a week, about 17 years ago. I was about 38 years old and feeling like I was a hundred. My oldest child had just turned 18. I’d gone from being practically a kid myself to having kids. I thought that on that trip away (which lasted about a month and is my only overseas holiday as an adult) I’d discover something new about myself. I did do that. But the thing that came as no surprise to me was how much I missed my kids. The flight out of Australia had felt a bit like a breaking free of always being responsible for someone else and even the flight itself felt short. The flight home took so long because I was missing my kids so much.
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Alice Shaw May 21, 2012
Oh how I love Paris.. may favourite city in the world (second favourite is my beloved Melbourne).. I had the opportunity 2 years ago to take my girls, just for a day and a night and oh how marvellous it was. We had so many fantastic moments, not least of all when a woman asked me directions in French.. I like to think she thought I was French.. (a little dream but I’m hanging on to it).. and having an icecream sundae in a little cafe just revelling in being in France..I hope to go back again soon and spend a lot more time at Galleries Lafayette!
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Margot Sharpe May 21, 2012
I too loveParis…..but allow it to be human, to make mistakes, to not, in all things, get it all right. But the divine architecture, the literary history, the effortless elegance. ….
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Erica May 21, 2012
Hated Paris. Dirty, bland, colourless, beggars everywhere. Oh and did I mention how dirty it was?
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Demon22 May 21, 2012
Have just returned from a holiday that ended with a week in Paris. Don’t know where Rachel was eating, but I can tell you the menus are far more extensive that what she was having – and the food is incredible. Perhaps she need to get out and about a bit more – weather permitting (but Paris in the rain is wonderful – ask Woody)
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Therese May 21, 2012
Definitely looking forward to reading more on The Hoopla from Rachel. Also looking forward to taking husband to Paris, putting him in dark glasses and red trou and having him stalk me, and follow me furtively as well.
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supaglen May 21, 2012
I spent 5 glorious days in Paris with my 11 yr old granddaughter. We had a ball, so easy to get around on the Metro, lunch in the Tuileries gardens, the galleries, the tower & the bateau mouche & of course the Galleries Lafayette & Printemps. Cafe Creme every morning on our way out. We are both determined to go back as soon as we can!
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anna May 21, 2012
Yes I like the french “bloke ” stalking you… ..i enjoyed your trip to Paris xo
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JoA May 21, 2012
I am/was hoping to go to France/Paris this time next year for my 50th and our 30th wedding anniversary. But now not so thrilled. I also love the lanes and boulevards of my beloved Melbourne, I can look past the dirty river, grime and beggars here so I’m sure I can in Paris too so I will only see the magnificent architecture, art and culture of the city of light.
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Dirty Pierre May 21, 2012
But of course Paris smells of urine, you silly eeenglish woman… when the hommes need to go to the bathroom, we just, how you say, find a quiet coin de la rue and flop it out.
And of course the service is sniffy… what do you think this is??? Bali?
No – we haven’t forgotten Agincourt!
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Jo Johnstone May 21, 2012
My daughter and I decided to go to Paris by train while holidaying in Italy….totally unplanned and the best time was had, staying in an apartment in Michel Bizot which we happened upon, for 11 nights, travelling to different parts of Paris via the Metro each day. Everything was spontaneous, exciting and memorable and the people were so friendly, which was so opposite to what I had been told. We didn’t want to leave.
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The Huntress May 21, 2012
I have loved these Paris installments! Ah, I can but dream – maybe Mr. Huntress will take me one day.
Oh and I do love the dear little (well, big) doggie
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Margaret May 21, 2012
absolutely loved Paris, have been about 5 or 6 times, once stayed at George IV hotel and dined at Jules Verne rest. halfway up Eiffel Tower. Fantastic. also stayed a few times on the Ille St.Louis behind Notre Dame in a room about the size of postage stamp, and still, loved it too. Galleries and Architecture wonderful. nowhere quite like it.
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Jenny E. May 21, 2012
I know of people who rave about Paris – it is one of the world’s most iconic cities. But it has never gelled with me. I love the art of course, but my first sight getting out of the station was a row of beggars and a huge queue for the taxi’s. Perhaps what you really need is a friendly Parisian to take you under their wing and show you the real Paris – I wish!
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Lisa Aherne May 22, 2012
How about Italy next? Milan, Florence, Amalfi Coast! And Tuscany. Mmmmmmm.
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LindaM May 22, 2012
My reaction to Paris when I visited for 10 days last year was fairly complex. I was so excited about going (probs the honeymoon had something to do with that too!) and I had waited a long time to get there! Well, I was pretty down on it at first, much to my shock. It felt….too iconic? Too coldly beautiful? Like a really attractive person who you feel is completely unapproachable? And the crowds!! Of Americans!! Everywhere!! The unrelenting nature of tourists (yes of course I was one) and very little sense of if there was even a ‘real’ Paris. I was quietly devastated, not wanting to say anything cause the hubby loved it (or rather, as he said later, loved being there with me).
So we had to leave it and come back for things to change. We went to Champagne for the weekend and came back over the Easter weekend when the city had shut down. And only THEN, when we walked and walked and walked, and found people and places that were just ‘there’ and I could scruff the gravel and lie on the grass (not permitted I know!) and just….sort of…hang out….that I got it. And then boy, did I fall hard.
The food, BTW, was fantastic all the time, but I did a lot of research (about six months of trawling various blogs and cross referencing) which was worth it. The coffee was fairly average but I believe that this has really changed in the last few months – google Coutume, if anyone is going soon – so really, all is in its place and I am planning my next trip back! Oh, and this time I will do better research on apartments, so we don’t end up in a postage stamp (but boy, did we laugh as we jumped from the bed to the toilet and fell from the toilet into the bath….now, that is, not very much at the time!)
Yes Paris, I did end up falling in love with you, even though I think I tried pretty hard not to. You are very, very seductive…in the right light.
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Melissa M. Wilson May 28, 2012
Thanks for a great adventure seen through your eyes. Looking forward to you next directorial piece which I believe is “The Seduction”. I have been following your work on your web site and this piece seems like a challenge that I am sure you are up too. Love your directing style. In all your shorts and feature you seem to get the most out of your actors as well as the locations. Have about a million questions I would love to ask about “Beautiful Kate”, still haunts me. Hope you will continue to write an article or two in the future, you’re a fun read.
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Sil McCausland June 7, 2012
Bahahaha Ms B, you were born too write… love your “Jo Brand” style of dry, witty word play and observational humour. In 1975, at the tender age of seven, I went to Paris with my family, travelling for 3 months on a eurail pass…Paris was full of Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves (Thank you Cher) that spent their days, lolling about in pristine parks, picking nits out of eachothers scalps….back then, Australian’s were unknown, unliked and a massive pain in a frenchman’s arse – “see voo play!” There were snippets of sheer awe and wonder and for me it was the vivid memory of a large Nigerian family, dressed in the most exquisite, multi-coloured Kaftans (it was the seventies) flying kites along the garden path of the Luxembourg Palace, it was moving art and my world was forever changed. I went back over the years, but was never rewarded with that spectical again. Like most cities, the glossy bits are highjacked by the bull-er-dogshit, smell of piss and cranky, busy locals…ce la vie. But one thing you undeniably captured, Ms B, was the effortless chic Parisian women exude throughout their lives! Mind you, you know how to rock denim on denim…no easy feat, unless you too, are a style queen!
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Anne June 15, 2012
I live in Paris – been here for about 12 years now after seeing it first in 1980. Obviously I/we love it.
OK there are dogs and there is dog shit. It’s crowded and people can be stressed and surly. There are beggars. And long taxi queues at big railway stations and the airports. But the streets are swept and gutters flushed daily, the garbage is collected six times a week, and the public transport is brilliant. The style and the care given to life’s little details are amazing and wonderful. Food shopping is a real daily pleasure. I love the producers’ and the public’s emphasis on quality, whether it’s wine, butter, perfume, or even a clothing alteration. And while you can have a bad meal (in one of those places with plasticized multi-language menus?) most restaurant are good and with a little care and research, your meal can be fabulous. It’s easy to get off the tourist track, as I did yesterday in the busy 5th arrondissement opposite Notre Dame! Can’t speak for the coffee as I don’t drink it, but I understand that its ….well ……French… And as for Paris art and architecture – heaven!
By the way, I know that Afghan hound. Style on legs!
No-one can do much about the weather! But don’t let a bit of dog poo spoil a glorious city for you.
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Deb Cooper June 25, 2012
Love or loathe Paris l don’t care l loved your open simple visions of what you felt Rachel.Looking forward to your next journey & tales
