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Accessories for the French Chic wardrobe

One of my dear friends asked how I would accessorize the French Chic wardrobe. While this is far from definitive, I think it's an interesting start.

I learn more and more every day as I build these vignettes for our shared pleasure: you should be ABSOLUTELY FANATICALLY DEMANDING when you purchase anything. There is a world of merchandise out there, and the perfect item exists, if you have the patience and the focus to find it. Settle for NOTHING LESS THAN PERFECTION. You deserve it. And if you fully intend to own many of your accessories for the rest of your life, you can easily justify buying the very best item being made today - support geniuses and craftspersons, and beautify the ... View the Post

French Chic: Expanding on the core wardrobe

So as lovely as the garments above are, this is certainly not going to be enough clothing to even get you through a week. Most of us would want at least five separate tops and bottoms (or a dress) to get through the week. Even if you wear black pants repeated each week, it's nice to have more than one pair.

Thus, I decided to take it upon myself to determine what additional garments Vivienne would want in order to consider this a complete wardrobe. Realistically, I think most of us would do this exercise twice - once for cooler weather, and once for the sweltering misery that passes for summer on much of our planet. But for starters, let's just round out this core wardrobe with a few of the ... View the Post

French Chic: The core of the French Chic wardrobe

One of the things about the book French Chic (Susan Sommers) which intrigued me was the list of garments which included "The seven essentials no well-dressed Frenchwoman would be without". That list included:

A black straight skirt a V-neck or cardigan sweater a suit a pair of jeans a silk shirt a couple of white tee-shirts an Hermes scarf

The idea of a list of essential clothing fascinates me; in a world that tries to compel me to over-consume, that finite-ness of a list like this, in which I could have some discipline and some structure, seems heaven-sent. Knowing that I was going to buy a fixed number of garments would give me the freedom to determine how much I wanted to spend, in what areas I ... View the Post

One French woman’s Small, Simple wardrobe: Back to the roots of the Vivienne Files

June 9, 2011 This is from a posting in a discussion group in which I listed the entirety of Vivienne's work wardrobe. I imagine that it has changed very little in the intervening years. Note that I've assigned "days of the week" to these little vignettes, but I don't know that this necessarily corresponds to how and when Vivienne actually wears things.

Here's the inventory... (1) Charcoal gray flannel pants, gray and black striped sweater (1b) red and gray twinset

(2) Black short knit skirt, black merino twinset (2b) black and white striped turtleneck longer (tunic length?) sweater

(3) Black pants and blazer, black and white ... View the Post

Back to the roots of the Vivienne Files – part 4

the following is a direct quote from the original Je Ne Sais Quoi discussion group postings I made regarding my friend Vivienne:

Someone asked me what Vivienne thinks of my wardrobe - to put it mildly she thinks I'm crazy! Admittedly, she has never actually been in my apartment and seen the beautiful arrangement (by color) of my bounty, and I HAVE seen her apartment (but not her closet) but she assures me that she has about 4 linear feet of hanging space. (Well okay, slightly more than a meter) But she thinks that I'm a genius packer - the last 2 trips I've made to Paris on business, she has come over to my hotel with me and hung out while I unpacked, pressed and otherwise got my act together. She ... View the Post