Not chic? Quel horreur!

Virginie Mouzat, Fashion Editor at Le Figaro, has written an article called "Très chic? Mais non!" in which she tells us that French women, long considered to be the most stylish people on earth, are anything but. She outlines what she says is the usual way of dressing, and marvels that, in her mind, it doesn't match their reputation. Mouzat says, "This is the nation that invented style — or the nation with the good sense to bother claiming to have invented style. The English language hasn’t even got a word for chic. So the greatest marvel of all is why the nation as a whole exhibits so little of either." She laments what she sees as their lack of style, and tries to think of a reason why it might be so. She thinks that "It’s as if their ability to intellectualise fashion and discuss it in the abstract — taxi drivers in Paris can give you an up-to-date resumé of Karl Lagerfeld or hold forth on the relative merits of Gaultier or McQueen — excuses them from actually having to follow anything as foolish and Anglo-Saxon as a trend." It's an interesting article. Perhaps, however, what she wants to see is simply a non-French idea of French chic. Via Arts and Letters Daily.