What I've Learned (and Unlearned) About 'French Girl Style' From 11 Years in Paris

I felt my husband’s eyes on me as I walked into the dining room for our ninth anniversary celebration dinner, in a way he hadn’t looked at me in years past. I sat before him, comfortable in a breezy Sézane dress with camel-colored sandals (also Sézane), a straw basket bag from Jamini, and a denim jacket from Comptoirs des Cotonniers that’s going on five years. He looked lovingly across the table, took my hand and said: “You’ve really changed since we’ve been together.” See, when we met 11 years ago, I barely had a clue who I was, let alone how to dress confidently or in a way that fit my body—and here I was, more at ease in my own skin than I’ve ever been, more than a decade later.

I arrived in Paris the summer of my twenty-first birthday. I brought with me two absurdly large suitcases packed with plenty of jean shorts, printed capri pants that hugged every curve, boot-cut jeans (the only pair I loved, that I considered confidence-boosting), a couple of late-nineties-era ankle-length skirts (from Delia’s), skin-tight colored tees, flowy tanks, running sneakers for everyday wear, several pairs of flip-flops that I rotated like accessories, and chunky earrings that made me feel dressed up no matter what I was wearing. I was an amalgam of various stores at the local mall and catalogs that landed in my parent’s mailbox. Like many other children of that era, I spent the bulk of my earnings from my various retail jobs at the likes of Express, The Limited, American Eagle, Forever 21, J.Crew (always the sale rack), and Modcloth. At the time I thought this fit my personality: outgoing, fun, and a bit nonconformist insofar as I was unwilling to be part of any one crowd. Or maybe I was trying to be different because I felt different.

Whatever was driving this penchant for vibrant colors, funky patterns, and fast fashion—which spanned the spectrum of too tight and too leggy to too cutesy—did not last long upon arriving in Paris. Unlike the other students that were a part of my study-abroad program that year, I wasn’t inculcated to believe pervasive myths about the Parisienne (that she is a superior being of ineffable elegance and femininity who instinctively knows what flatters her body, wears little makeup save for a ruby red lip or a smoky eye, and lives in ballet flats), nor did I expect my experience around them to unlock something in myself. I was there to speak French like a Parisian, bathe in the city’s history, assess whether I could envision living there after graduation and hopefully go on a few dates. I got what I expected, down to the Parisian boyfriend who became my husband. But I also began suffering from a near-crippling self-consciousness that would last long after I was married.