What Parisien(ne)s Wore...

[Deleted]

Thank you so much to all of the people on here who have posted many wonderful photographs of Paris as it is. I'm heading to Paris in a month for my honeymoon (I have been several times before, but it's been a while), and I'm glad to see that it is as awe-inspiring and as gritty as I remember.

I've read with great interest the threads about current dressing habits, because yes, I am a woman and it is my honeymoon and I would not want to be a figure of derision. I wouldn't be caught dead at home in some of the outfits the tourists have on, let alone in a city I respect and love.

I've been buying books on Paris for years. One of my favourites is a book of photos and anecdotal history called Bonjour Paris, published in 1963 by Tudor Publishing of New York. Yes, it's meant for the tourist trade, and yes, they surely chose the most evocative pictures, but just look at how people are dressed. These were tourists and real Parisians, out and about on their daily business.

Near the Café de la Paix:


On the Champs Elysées:


And at the Jardin du Luxembourg on what I expect was a splendid Saturday afternoon:


Now, I have to take exception with the person who said that people's nostalgia for the "good old days" clouded their remembrance of what they wore, and that people always went around in "comfortable" clothing. That woman on the Champs Elysées may not have been comfortable, but man, was she stylish.

Thanks, once again, for the many (too many, I fear, I do have a job!) hours of entertainment.

[Deleted]

Thanks for those pictures, lizzyfaire! I was in Paris as a little boy back then, so I saw the city in a different way, but I nevertheless did understand, even in those days, that Paris was exceptional and that people did not at all dress the same way as "back home."

One remarkable thing about those photos is that the colour black (or at least any of the dark colours) is less dominant than it is now.

[Deleted]

Thank you, Kerouac, for the inspiration. I might post some more tomorrow, just to rouse my fellow tourists. If I could get away with that cream sheath dress, yellow coat and pink hat next month, I would, but I would be looked at very strangely, I fear. I think most of those photos were taken spring/summer. But I agree with you about the variety of colour.

Lucky you, to have lived in Paris in 1963.

[Deleted]

I didn't live in Paris. My family were just peasants passing through in 1960, 1964, 1965, 1968, etc. However, we had the good luck to have family in the suburbs, which always allowed us to stay for a few days between the United States and Lorraine.

[Deleted]

I lived in the German countryside as a kidlet 1967 - 1971. Saw some wonderful cities then, not Paris, though.

Highjacking my own thread. Tsk. Fashion forward!

[tod2]

I love those 'old-time' photos! I must confess however, I prefer Jardin Luxembourg without all those crowds.
Paris is a wonderful place to have a Honeybun ~ has fiancee`been before?

[Deleted]

Back in those days, the public parks still had chaisières -- old ladies who would watch all of the chairs like a hawk and sell you a ticket for sitting in one. Everybody hated the system, but it must be admitted that the chairs were always perfectly arranged in those days.

[Deleted]

Yes, tod2, he went to Paris years ago by himself, but didn't much enjoy it.

I've been to Paris several times on my own. The last trip made me so melancholy; I couldn't turn to someone and say, "Did you see that? Isn't that magnificent?" I then vowed I wouldn't return until I had someone to share it with. And now I do.

[bixaorellana]

I love the young woman with the low heels in the foreground of the last picture.

That's pretty much how people in general dressed in 1963 when they went out and about, although the lady in the yellow coat is quite elegant. The guy passing her certainly seems to have noticed that. Except for the hat, the look is timeless.

You can see that hats were on their way out in '63. None of the men are wearing them, and only the older women. Ditto gloves for women. The shirtwaist dresses were practically a uniform in that era -- making a woman dressed, but not dressed up. I'll bet every woman in those photos is wearing some kind of a girdle and probably hose, as well.

Anyway, this is fascinating stuff -- thanks. Best wishes on your marriage and have a lovely honeymoon.

[Deleted]

Bix, thank you for the kind wishes.

Yes, I remember my mother getting ready in those days. She didn't have the girdle, but garter belt and stockings, backcombed hair and high heels are indelibly etched in my memory.

Here are just a few more pictures, then we'll call it a day.

A lovely Japanese tourist and her interpreter near the Tour. How things have changed:


What I would think were American tourists at the Trocadéro. Note the somewhat racy narrow slacks:


And, the last. Disaffected youth sitting in a café near the Panthéon:


So much for the "old-time" tourists. (Tod2, I'll never forget that comment. K2 and I were around in "those days"!)

[bjd]

I think those "disaffected youth" in the last picture are tourists, but not from 1963, a few years later. The clue is that red/striped bag on the girl's lap. Everybody who went to Greece in those days had one.

[Deleted]

Well, the book was published in 1963, it's not a reprint, so I'll have to say that bag was the one that started the trend.

[bjd]

Okay. Those bags were still hot sellers 10 years later! Maybe the Greeks should start selling them again to improve their economy!

[tod2]

Yes, old-time photos of old-time tourists! I left high school in 1963 and all my friends were heading for Europe as backpackers. I didn't get to Paris until 1980 on my very first overseas trip and as a youngish mummy with a 2 year old. I can't believe we travelled all over Europe and Israel in 6 weeks with a baby!!

Things that strike me about your old-time photos Lizzyfaire are the shirt-waister dresses as Bixa mentioned, but I wouldn't mind betting the lass nearest the camera in the first photo also has one of those stiff tuille petticoats under her billowing dress. I used to wear mine like that at 13.

In the 'Pantheon' picture, all the men seemed to be dressed in a suit and tie. Those cafe`s are just across Rue St.Jacques in Rue Soufflot, on the hill called The Montagne Ste.Genevieve - one of the few places in Paris where you can stand at the corner of the Centuries. From there one can see the 15thC Tour St.Jacques just across the Seine, on your right the great dome of the Pantheon, a mile away to one's left - the Eiffel Tower, and behind you the Arenes De Lutece.

[Deleted]

tod2, i remember those tulle petticoats! I wore one for a special event when I was tiny, 4 or 5. The dress was a hand-me-down, and it didn't have a slip that went under it. At the end of the evening my thighs were bloody from the tulle rubbing against them, but I didn't say anything because I was so proud of the way the skirt swished when I walked. Ah yes, suffering for Beauty. Now the worse thing that can happen is you can turn your ankle in your platforms, or your thong rides too far up your bum.

Thanks, as well, for the tip about the corner of the centuries. Just the sort of info I'm trying to gather for my trip. (I've gotten all sorts of ideas of unusual sites from anyport.) I'll be sure to stand on that corner and look.

One last observation - did you notice the hand of the gentleman in the last photo off to the left? Nicely dressed, sitting in a café in the Latin Quarter in the sun? Perhaps a student, perhaps a tourist or… ? Reminds us of what was happening in parts of the US at the time (1963), and how things were/are different/have changed.

[Deleted]

We can also wonder uncomfortably if he was cropped out of the photo deliberately.

[bixaorellana]

Or, we may wonder if too much is being read into it. There have been waves of Black people from the US alone emigrating to France since the 19th century. There was another wave of African-American emigration to France after WWI.

From what I've learned on various threads here, there are many French people whose ancestors came from Africa or the Caribbean, too.

[Deleted]

Well, leaving just the hand is so much more provocative than cutting him out completely, don't you think?

[Deleted]

And yes, Bix, I realise that he could be simply a native-born Frenchman, that's what I find so intriguing, and what I find so marvellous about France.

Not a big deal. I've looked at that picture a hundred times before, though, and never noticed him until I posted it.

[Deleted]

There were huge numbers of students from former French West Africa at the time (most of the African colonies became independent in 1960). But this book was published in the United States for an American readership, I presume. Even a publisher in New York would not have wanted to reduce sales due to some non consensual images back then.

I have personal reasons for fearing the worst.

[bixaorellana]

I guess I'm more from the "Sometimes, Madam, a cigar [or in this case, a cigarette] is just a cigar" school of thought.


It reminds me all too much of all the photos I've taken, then realized there was only part of something that would have made the picture better.

What I mostly get from that photo, besides the perfect example of a woman's suit & hairstyle of the era, is how unhappy all the women look. The three at the table aren't just glass-half-empty people -- their glasses are completely empty. Did they run out of money? And the green suit woman seems to be realizing that her companion is way too supercilious to be tolerated.

But a serious question -- do you know if these are professional photos made to show Paris and its people, or are they a compendium of photos from various sources?

[Jazz]

Thank you for these, lizziefaire. I love to look at vintage photos of Paris and was definitely born in the wrong age. Each one is evocative of that time in infinite ways...the last is simple and special,
the young women enjoying a drink in the sun, beautiful.

The hand in the last photo...I like that it was left in. At first I was confused and thought you were all talking about the fact he was smoking! (now I feel like Stephen Colbert... ;D) I think he was cropped because the emphasis of the compostion of the photo was essentially on the lovely young women, the passersby and the 'sense' of the moment.


Happiness on your trip, it will be beautiful!

[Deleted]

Strange provenence of the book - I don't know. Published by an American house, printed in Switzerland, written by François Brigneau, with a list of some 18 photographers, most of whom are European, and the copyright is held by a Parisian company. Many of the photographers have artistic solo names, such as Feher and Belzeaux. The publishing house also printed books in French and German, all on different cities or regions of Europe. Half of it is history, unconnected to the photos, with accounts of Danton's beheading and how only one fatality occurred during the building of the Eiffel Tower, a boy named Dujardin. The chapters aren't really chronologically arranged, just rambling anecdotes.

I'm not sure if it was sold in Paris for tourists to take home with them, or sold in the States. Of course, there is no ISBN or price listed anywhere. Tudor Publishing was producing books on art from the 1920s onwards.

So in short, I haven't a clue.

[Deleted]

You might like the front of the Galliéra municipal fashion museum as it was today.

[Deleted]

Thank you, K2. I somehow doubt I could drag my fiancé to a fashion museum, though. He won't even go to the Louvre.

[Deleted]

Well, it's closed for renovation at the moment anyway. I have never been there myself, except for sitting in the garden at lunch hour today.

[onlymark]

Sept 19, 2011 17:19:59 GMT bixaorellana said:

The three at the table aren't just glass-half-empty people -- their glasses are completely empty. Did they run out of money?

The 'back story' is actually that the three women are called Apolline, Dione and Odette.
Odette, on the far left has treated the other two to a drink at the cafe. Odette though, at variance to the meaning of her name, has realised the cost of the drinks is far beyond what she expected.
Apolline and Dione don't realise this and are displaying irritation that all they've been treated to is a tepid glass of water and Odette has not even shared out her cigarettes.

Apolline, far right is also suffering from mouth ulcers picked up, she believes, from kissing her rather unkempt and mildly odorous artist boyfriend in his attic apartment overlooking the Seine. That's why she's feeling her lip with her tongue.
She also is having trouble with her woven handbag which is so last year but is a favourite of hers even though it appears to have also picked something up from the apartment of her boyfriend, namely fleas, and is in danger of jumping all by itself off her lap. She has to hold it down.

Dione, (middle) has her own troubles. Toothache from crunching accidentally the shell of an escargot - well nobody told how how you should eat them - and also realising that her silk dress isn't actually silk, and beginning to itch rather badly.
All Odette can think about is the woman walking past her and whether the adage "blue and green should never be seen" is really true any more.

[bixaorellana]

Ah, oui, le seulMarque. To think that I thought they only suffered ennui!

However your aperçu has given me a nouvelle vague of compassion, but hélas, also a crise existentiel over my wardrobe.

[bjd]

No, no, no, seulmentMarc. These are not French women at all. They are American tourists. They have been travelling around Europe (hence the Greek bag bought at a souvenir stand just below the Acropolis) and are getting mighty tired of being in each other's company.

Here they are in romantic Paris. They decided to sit at a café in the Latin Quarter, hoping to talk to some sexy unwashed French students, but alas! all they got was some overpriced drinks, the service stinks, the waiter is surly but they are so fed up with having the same conversation that they don't even comment on the couple walking by.

However, the young woman in the pair on the right, looks up questioningly at her boyfriend/husband/partner, wondering whether she is better off with a robotic looking man like him, or whether she would have had a better time going around Europe in a 2CV with a girlfriend or two and getting her own woven Greek bag.

[onlymark]

Who knows? Maybe you are right.
However, the woman in the couple walking by looks more like she is saying, "You know you've still got dandruff? I can see it from here."