Parisian Chic - Mais où est l'inspiration?

I havent revisited Paris since my childhood, and I can honestly say last weekend I fell in love with the city all over again. It felt as though I were stepping off the train and into the colour version of Luc Besson's stunningly shot "Angel-a". You can feel the romance and culture hanging in the air, the xmas lights and festive window dressing (a perfect example being Repetto, the famous ballerina shoe shop pictured below) adding the magical finishing touch.

Culture and city beauty aside, I had visions of walking into the pages of French Vogue - the style is fierce, the girls have a quiet arrogance - which indeed they have earnt; there is a definite sense of "look but don't touch." As a population the average woman is perfectly groomed, donning head to toe shades of midnight and charcoal with the odd spattering of white to lift the ensemble - the fashion industry's uniform palette. Paris is typically stereotyped for its achingly stylish crowd and it certainly did not disappoint, especially in the more affluent parts of town. However, as intimidating as this may be, the real head turners and eye catching ones that make you do a double take are hard to find.

Whilst in a small boutique courtyard off the Rue St Honore, we bumped into a trend forecaster in the midst of, to me, what seemed like a marathon style binge. She was visiting six top cities within the space of a week, posting her findings on trend forecasting website 'StyleLens.' She quoted that so far in Paris only two girls had caught her eye, one from Britain (which I am flattered to admit was myself,) the other from Ireland. Some may say a poor reflection of the street style in Paris. However, having been a particularly wet couple of days, feasible explanation for this could be that the French know better than to wander the streets battling against the elements, unlike tourists (par exemple - moi) who have no choice!

So maybe it wasn't the inspirational haven I thought it was going to be, maybe I didnt come away with a memory bank bursting with ideas, but I did get to visit Laduree for afternoon tea, (a childhood dream) and pouring milk from a silver Laduree engraved milk pot whilst eating mini rose petal macaroons was plenty 'Parisian chic' to make the whole trip worth while !

NB. No, the bottom photograph is not me sporting a beret in keeping with the french theme, temperatures were close to freezing, so for practicality reasons it seemed appropriate to accessorize with a wooly hat - much to the amusement of my housemate, who thought I had invested in a beret specifically for the trip. Luckily I decided to leave the necklace of onions at home..