Travelers' Tales Paris (30 page)

After a strutting tour of every public gathering spot I can manage, and with not even one proposition, I return home, limping but mostly undamaged, to survey the success these women have wielded on me. I poke and prod my pores, hoping to discover the secret and realizing that as I paid little attention to what they were doing, my hopes of replicating the result are fairly small. I struggle to remove my overpriced jeans. I got them on. The laws of physics comfort me: they must be removable. My feet are throbbing as I step out of my new shoes and back on solid ground. My arches have had too much of a workout.

The next morning I greet my face. It looks as if it has just landed in the emergency room. Colors blend in to black and red and blue that seem to be everywhere but where they were yesterday. I scrub and cleanse and exfoliate and start again. When I am done, however, half the bottles remain unopened, and I don't look much different than I always have. But for those new, red pouty lips. Actually they aren't pouty at all. They are red though, and I figure that counts for something.

Six months have passed and I still don't possess that natural style. Maybe I just need the scarf.

Between struggling with the subjunctive tense, the French political structure and excerpts of Proust, I return to Galeries Lafayette to watch other women, and see how they do it. Just to hear the sound of their accents: “
Les écharpes
,” they say as they describe the scarves. The sound flows like the Seine, the last syllable rolling forward in the mouth. I've solicited other shops for their
scarving expertise, but none are as good as Mlle. Vincent (as it says on her name tag) at Galeries Lafayette. Every week I canvas the area. She smiles at me, like a regular in a local pub greeting a familiar but unnamed face. This beautifully draped woman demonstrates how, with two flicks of the wrist, I could turn any piece of silk or cotton or polyester into a “fashion accessory.” As hard as I try, my scarves only ever look like a bib from Big Bob's House of Ribs.

And each Sunday I devour another of the weekly
Elle
magazines, or
Dépêche Mode
, or anything glossy that proclaims French style. And still, after planning and plotting my texture options the night before, every morning is a chore, as I try to create some well structured outfit. And no matter how hard I try, I still look like I just stepped off the campus of Bowling Green.

Nine months have passed. I've mastered the tenses, an overview of French history and their beloved literature. I have acquired a nice social circle, but none of my friends are literary figures. In fact most of them have jobs. And none of them smoke. I am feeling a failure. Then I get a letter. A note, really.

A friend is coming to visit. An ex-boyfriend, passing through town on a “Europe in six weeks” pre-packaged expedition. Looking as Parisian as possible is mandatory for our meeting. This is my test. My watershed.

The morning of our meeting arrives. I try to tame my hair, slip into the volume-challenged jeans, apply a bright color to my lips, insert the appropriate earrings and elevate myself two inches in the shoes. I casually toss a scarf (as I now own several) around my neck. Actually I place it carefully, hoping for it to look casually tossed. I grab my massive shoulder bag, and I descend into
the Métro to meet The Ex. He is on a tight schedule, which allows me the comfort of knowing this encounter will last only a few hours.

I ascend gracefully from the Métro stop. There he is, looking like the sorest thumb in
tout-Paris
. Shorts and a baseball cap and Converse running shoes. He screams North America. He is startled to see me approach. He doesn't quite recognize me at first. I greet him and offer him my cheek. He doesn't know what to do with it. He tries to hug me. An awkward exchange follows, half cheek kisses, half insubstantial hugs. He trails me as we enter and seat ourselves at the bistro. I translate the menu for him and highlight the most interesting items. I order for both of us, and complain when an item doesn't arrive. I introduce him to a friend of mine and his girlfriend who pass in the street. I recommend places to visit and towns to explore. Dazed, he comments; “You look...different.” I laugh at his naïveté. I toss my hair, but it catches on my earrings. I smile, but he tells me that I have lipstick on my teeth. I play with my precious scarf, but its ends persist in falling into my café au lait. I search for my wallet, but it is lost in the pounds of necessities that I have managed to stuff into my oversized shoulder bag. I realize I have attained a high-maintenance look. Which, given the circulation-inhibiting nature of my clothing, is not a particularly comfortable one.

I feel, however, as if I've made it. I have soaked up French culture and it is soaking into my pores. I lean forward and try to flirt, as I've seen the Parisian women do every day in the cafés, but he only pulls back, as if I've invaded his personal space.

My chicness has been on display now for two hours. He must be in awe of my new-found grace, and stunned by my transformation. He looks at his watch and proclaims that this encounter must end. He picks up his baseball cap and puts it back on his head. I flinch. He fumbles at his velcroed money belt for cash. I cringe. He pulls out some francs and tries to understand the exchange rate. I cower. As he leaves he puts his arm around me. I smile. It's true. I must be irresistible, like all those French women.
He lowers his voice: “You know I'm impressed. You've learned a lot this past year. You speak French really well. But do you really think you look good like that?”

Before Louis XVI mounted the throne in 1774, women's hair styles had already reached a volume of such enormity that the weight on their necks was oftentimes insupportable. There were cases where the mouth of a lady in
grande toilette
would be at a point equidistant between the top of her coiffure and her feet. “The head was transformed alternatively into mountain, forest, or garden,” wrote Éze and Marcel, summing up the extravagances of the period of Mme. du Barry. “It was an orgy of butterflies, birds, tree branches, cardboard cupids. The hair was teased, crimped, loaded with feathers, gauze, ribbons, garlands, pearls, and diamonds. One went so far as to ornament one's coiffure with vegetables.”

One went further than that and carried a whole tableau on one's head. According to a contemporary witness, Louis Petit de Bachaumont, the Duchesse de Chartres wore an eye-catching scene, the central figure of which was a seated female wet-nursing an infant who was said by the Duchesse to represent M. le Duc de Valois. “To the right was a
perroquet
on its stand, pecking at a cherry, the bird being precious to the Duchesse, and at the left, a blackamoor,” Bachaumont noted in his
Mémoires Secrets
.

By 1778, the monster hairdos were taking a nautical turn and heads bearing frigates in full sail were the going fashion; one style, “à la Belle-Poule,” was named after a French ship that was victorious in a skirmish with part of the British fleet off the coast of Brittany. In 1783, the Montgolfier brothers and their lighter-than-air ballooning inspired new soaring coiffures. Benjamin Franklin's discovery of atmospheric electricity did not give birth to a new French hairdress, but he was honored with a hat, “
le chapeau paratonnerre
,” with a little metal chain to attract lightning extending from the back of the hatband down to the wearer's heels.

—Phyllis and Fred Feldkamp,
The Good Life...or What's Left of It

HANNS EBENSTEN

S
OON AFTER THE END OF
W
ORLD
W
AR
II,
WHEN IT WAS AGAIN
possible to visit the continent of Europe, and when I lived in England, I went with two friends for a week to Paris. It was a dream come true. We were in our early twenties, quite innocent, and on a very tight budget.

We took the day train from London and arrived in the evening at the Gare St-Lazare, which conveniently and dramatically brings the traveler right into the center and bustle of Paris. As we stood in the square outside the station and breathed the heady air and ambiance of Paris, we felt that it was a major achievement merely to have arrived there. We walked with our luggage to the rue du Colisée where, we had heard, there were small hotels which offered cheap rooms for
men who liked the color green
or who were
musical
, or
so
—the word
gay
, in those days, was used only to mean lively, merry, light-hearted, given to pleasures.

At the Hôtel du Colisée, they showed us a three-bedded room; but each of us hoped, although we had never discussed this, to meet a rich beau who, in return for certain favors granted, would pay for our dinners and theater tickets and other amusements—so
we took three single rooms. There was a rudimentary bathroom along the corridor.

My friends were as graceful as a pair of swans, and within 24 hours of our arrival had established amiable relationships. John's friend was a tall, black American, the leading dancer in the revue at the Lido night club; Neville's
amour
was an Egyptian playboy whose mother was such a well-connected
grande dame
, that he could take the three of us to a showing of the highly publicized New Look collection at Christian Dior for which it was impossible to obtain tickets. He had enormous hands. “We all know what
that
implies,” Neville gloated.

I was the ugly duckling of this trio; and after the days' dutiful cultural sightseeing, when darkness fell and the lights lit up and Paris became truly
la ville lumière
and as romantic as we had expected, my friends would go off to dinner with their protectors, and I was left to my own devices. I had barely enough money for food; the cost of theater and even cinema tickets was prohibitive. The cheapest way to spend the evening was to go to the
Bain Vapeur
in the nearby rue de Penthièvre, a bathhouse in a working-class district chiefly patronized by men who lived in that area and had no bathrooms in their homes. But there was an army barracks close by, and some of the young soldiers had no more money for entertainment than I had, so they went there to while away many hours. There was some furtive sexual activity in dark corners and where the steam was most dense.