Embrace your inner snob. Wear red with pink. Eat oysters at home and go to bed before midnight on New Year’s Eve. This is just some of the advice from four Frenchwomen in a new book on how to be Parisian.
In their 240-page tome, How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are, the authors cover everything from bad habits and what to display on your mantelpiece to sulking and how to wear a miniskirt.
According to the model Caroline de Maigret and her co-writers, Parisian women never try to be friends with their children, never work too hard on their appearance and never have overly white teeth. They love navy blue with black, and bags that don’t match their clothes and wouldn’t dream of getting married in a “poufy meringue” dress. High heels should only be surrendered “the day you walk into the delivery room”.
But the 39-year-old, whose jobs include being an ambassador for the French fashion house Chanel, insists that the book is about dismantling – not fuelling – stereotypes. How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are, co-authored with Anne Berest, Audrey Diwan and Sophie Mas, came about after de Maigret found herself being constantly quizzed about Parisian women during trips abroad.
“I was travelling a lot and was being asked all around the world about the Parisian girl,” she says.
And while she hopes that the book, newly published by Doubleday in the United States and Britain, is fun and shows that Parisians can send themselves up a little bit, she also sees it as a self-help manual for the stressed out modern woman.
As someone juggling motherhood with several part-time jobs, de Maigret says time is her ultimate luxury.
“I think there is a big pressure on women nowadays so, although it’s a light book, there’s still some feminism there,” she says.
“It is an illusion to think you can be all these women at the same time. That’s what this book is all about, to explain that, yes, you are this woman – but not all on the same day – and to tell women to give up running after an ideal,” she says.
Instead, de Maigret advises women to “find out who you are” and concentrate on that. “That way you have time to do other things,” she says.
How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are (Doubleday) is available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
