An unwanted, unforeseen blog hiatus was, for me, an 8-inch Louboutin heel rammed straight into my creative gears. Production came to an abrupt halt. Smoke everywhere. After a whirlwind weekend calling on the most tech-savvy people I know (disclaimer: I do fashion, not XML) we were able to resuscitate Eurotrash, lipstick and all.

In the interim I had some free time on my hands to do things like sell my Balenciaga (hey man, I was preparing for the Apocalypse over here) and re-read Genevieve Antoine Dariaux’s A Guide to Elegance. Albeit the book was written with a 50-something Charlotte York living in the 3rd Arrondissement in mind – this 20-something eurotrash girl living in a North York loft with her mom found a peculiar relevance in all these rules about not wearing a wristwatch after 5pm, unless it’s disguised as a diamond bracelet of course.

The book reads from A to Z, a step-by-step approach to acquiring elegance. Madame Dariaux tells you how to match cashmere with tweed, when an alligator bag is appropriate and how much underwear an elegant woman should wear. But instead of typing away a rather dry book review – there are certain things a eurotrash girl just won’t do – I’d prefer to sit here and harp on what I believe are the two most important pages Mme. Dariaux ever wrote.

Q is for Quantity.

“One of the most striking differences between a well-dressed American woman and a well-dressed Parisienne is in the size of their respective wardrobes. The American would probably be astonished by the very limited number of garments hanging in the Frenchwoman’s closet, but she would also be bound to observe that each one is of excellent quality, expensive perhaps by American standards, and perfectly adapted to the life the Frenchwoman leads.”

image: Anthony Ausgang “An American in Paris”

Can we really chalk up Mme. Dariaux’s perception of what separates an American woman from a Parisienne to a difference in location? As if an American woman living in Paris would all of a sudden discard her 7 pairs of UGGs, 15 pairs of jeans from every single denim brand that’s had their 15 minutes of supremacy, and tons and tons of cute H&M white tees, graphic tees and tanks in order to adapt to the French life she is now forced to lead. I highly doubt it. In fact, I think there’s something more than just a “when in Rome” explanation to this; the difference between the well-dressed American woman and her Parisian counterpart is absolutely, tutti frutti, fundamental. Take away the American and French adjectives and you’re left with two well-dressed women who use two very different approaches, one of which, I’ve been singing about for as long as I can remember.

I ain’t rich. I don’t have a Daddy’s expense account. I’ve worked my entire life since I was in GRADE 7… yeah man, I was breaking labour laws to make a dime of my own. I’m very much a self-made woman when it comes to my possessions and yet people often think I’m absolutely out of my mind, over the cuckoo’s nest if you will, when I buy designer pieces (like real designer, none of that monogram or diffusion shit). I’ve said it before and I’ll say it now, if you spend $1000 on a well-made winter coat, that works out to just over 5 dollars/day from November to March to look absolutely fucking fabulous AND be totally warm – the figure goes down for every additional year you wear it (and trust me, you’ll wear it). It’s not rocket science, and Mme. Dariaux would definitely concur:

“Americans are often shocked by the high prices in the Paris shops, and they wonder how a young career girl, for example, who earns half the salary of her American counterpart, can afford to carry an alligator handbag and to wear a suit from the Balmain boutique. The answer is that she buys very few garments; her goal is to possess a single perfect ensemble for each of the different occasions in her life, rather than a wide choice of clothes to suit every passing mood.”

According to Mme. Dariaux, white is more elegant than black for evening wear, hair should always be simple and the black designer bag never goes out of style. Case in point. Image: YYZ street style.

Am I not a Frenchwoman, then, in deriving my perfect little equation above? I’m the kind of girl who keeps her TTC tokens in a Louis Vuitton wallet, and yet I’ve most certainly spent WAY less money on my wallet than the same person who would curl their upper lip in total disdain at the thought of my Vuitton costing $500. I bought my wallet when I was 16. I’m now 26 years old. It’s been on numerous trips, got lost twice at Robarts library, thrown in the mud, stepped on, accompanied me through the craziest decade of my life and it looks just as beautiful as it did the day I bought it. Wanna know my daily average on that one? Just over a DIME. Yet people go out and replace their beaten down wallets every year spending a minimum of $50, which works out to the same as owning a jaw-dropping designer piece (which, by the way, I plan on getting another decade out of).

If we put ourselves in a Frenchwoman’s Louboutins we begin to see that less is more – even when the less costs more. This brings me to the second part of my story: the hipster. As I walked around downtown waiting for my blog to somehow come back to life I started to play a game called “Count the Hipsters”; a little Duck Duck Goose of sorts. Oh GOD, they are at every turn. That swagger, those glasses, and that god awful music they, LET’S GET SERIOUS, only pretend to like because PitchFork says so. It’s too much. There was a time when hipsters were a minority, and an authentic minority. Nowadays it’s hard to tell the hipsters from the hipsters! A young guy moves to Toronto and thinks all of a sudden he has to start dressing like he doesn’t know where his next meal is going to come from in order to make friends, and maybe, even get laid. And then I stopped. Considering the social leverage and sheer multitude of them, the hipster epidemic starts to look like something more than just a popular trend.

Crystal Castles. image: For All Things Vintage

What does this all have to do with elegance? Insofar as the elegant Frenchwoman is fundamentally opposed to an American woman who may be well-dressed, but lacks elegance – could the hipster be the American way of reclaiming elegance? The reclamation of that often imitated but never duplicated je ne sais quoi possessed by she who possesses elegance? If the American standard is “to continually buy and consume”, as Mme. Dariaux claims, then in it’s blatant opposition against mainstream consumerism and things like Juicy Couture, the hipster prototype is more akin to a well-dressed Frenchwoman than the Daddy’s girl iced up to the elbows in Tiffany & Co. I mean, is not finding a one-off vintage sweater you actually end up living in sort of like wearing the same Chanel suit to every occasion that requires you to wear a suit, and then some? And I’m not talking about the wannabe hipsters who get tattoos because they are cool and hang out at Ronnie’s, unshaven, drinking Labatt 50 – I’m talking about the hipster, hipsters. The ones who have found their own mode of expression through wearing the same worn-in Levis and one-of-a-kind spectacles, waaaaaay before it was even a thing. When it eventually became a thing, accordingly, was the slavish imitation of these folk just a way of admiring that which they unequivocally stand for?

At the end of the day it’s a hard task trying to equate hipsters and Hermes but I’ll tell you one thing, I know many a hipsters who appreciate the fine quality of haute couture; who would spend $400 on a sweater because it was well-made and who have a brazen dislike for H&M, Aritzia and Pottery Barn. Considering the hipsters, the book, Mme. Dariaux, my rules, this blog, I’ve come to one conclusion. Elegance, my dears, cannot be quantified.

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