Where There's Still Femme In Feminine
I'm just one of many women in skirts here in Paris, and one of many who have a very feminine look. Here's one.
By the way, this is the single best place in the world to buy bras, especially if you're a girl who has a lot to put in one. Excuse me, boys, while I wax rhapsodic on best brand I've found -- Empreinte. (Maybe skip the text and look at the pretty pictures?)
I used to buy mine at Le Bon Marché department store, where they have telephones in the dressing room so you can call the vendeuse (salesgirl) for different sizes or colors. (Vive la difference over Macy's, huh?) I totally lucked out today, because not only did I find the single best bra I've ever put on my body, just when I arrived at the Empreinte display at Galeries Lafayette, they were taping up signs for a one-hour sale, moins (less) 20 percent.
When I found them, I was wearing a jacket I bought on eBay for $10, and a skirt I got on eBay for $12, plus earrings I bought a few years ago at the French Target, Monoprix, but there are some things you just have to spend on, and a discount sure comes in...sorry...handy.
With my 10 percent off card (you can get a tourist discount card at the detaxe desk with your passport at Galeries Lafayette or Printemps, the big dept. stores), my bras cost me in dollars what they would have cost me if the fucking dollar weren't in the fucking poubelle (wastebasket), which is the bargain price of 93 euros. Then, minus the detaxe discount at the border (to get the V.A.T. back), they'll be about $81 each. And when I tell you that is a bargain, believe me, it is. This style I found is the single greatest bra in the universe -- made well enough to last years, and it's gorgeous, and fits me like whomever designed it was a blind person who spent a week feeling me up before hitting the drawing board.
I happened to be in the Galeries Lafayette neighborhood (the 9th arrondissement) for our lunch -- a fantastic lunch with French journo Laurent Chalumeau, a big Elmore Leonard fan and a novelist and screenwriter as well. I liked the guy a lot even before we met, because he is fantastic with American slang and he and Gregg have these hilarious e-mail exchanges tossing it back and forth. In the last one, he called Gregg a hick. Gregg corrected him: "I'm not a hick, I'm a rube."
They stop at F... how is that for "poitrines genereuses"? Most bras stop at F!!!
The best place to look for large-cup bras is in England.
NicoleK at December 10, 2008 6:23 AM
Jeez, I second your feelings about the freakin' MIRACLE of finding a great bra!!! I would lay out 81 bucks in a heartbeat if I could find one that fit me the way you describe! (It's one of the best legal pleasures money can buy. ;D )
Melissa G at December 10, 2008 6:30 AM
Usually when someone is writing "in his/her cups" it means while drunk. Nice of you to provide an alternate meaning.
BlogDog at December 10, 2008 6:36 AM
So jealous! Bras here are not made for breasts... real ones, that is.
Mary at December 10, 2008 7:47 AM
Bras here are not made for breasts... real ones, that is.
Exactly right. (She means in the USA, of course.) And these bras are generous. Also, in the USA, big boobs are usually assumed to come with a back like a farmer's. These start at 80 instead of the usual 85 you see in most shops/bra sizes as the smallest backsize (85 probably being equivalent to a 34).
As for them stopping at F, these are for poitrines genereuses, not poitrines circuses. For those, yes, perhaps England.
Amy Alkon at December 10, 2008 4:31 PM
Real boobs are acted upon by gravity, therefore requiring suspension bridge quality engineering support (mine definitely do!). Those Empriente bras look like they're strong & pretty!
I've been lucky shopping at Winners (which is apparently the Canadian spinoff of TJ Max). I've found quite a few gorgeous French bras in EE and F, for a 34 back, and they were only C$29.00 (roughly US$32.00). One was a Lejaby.
Chrissy at December 11, 2008 11:57 AM
Setting aside the topic of tits for a second --and I never expected to begin a sentence that way in this lifetime, and hope never to do so again-- what's so 'feminine' about a thick tweed suit?
Y'know....
Sometimes when you're a little kid, the pop-culture responses of the people around you can lead you to believe that your own tastes and sensitivities are foreshortened or contorted. Then you grow up to look back and realize that no, you were right all along, and everybody else was freekin' whack. Julie Andrews is one such example.
When I was little as a boy could be, people talked all the time about how fashionable and fascinating First Lady (or widow) Jacqueline Kennedy was. The pictures I saw of her weren't that appealing. Not being able to share the fascination, I presumed there was some component of her allure that would come online for me later. (Kids are often told "One day, you're really going to enjoy this kind of thing." I could crash the internet by listing all the times people said that about shitty music.)
When the attraction of Jackie never jelled, I assumed it was something generational at work, and not merely developmental.
Then, while casually browsing Slate just a few years ago, this passage describing Jackie's clothes brought it all into focus: "[T]heir starchy fabrics and formless shapes were designed to guarantee not front-page coverage in WWD (the trade rag's publication of Jackie's Paris couture bill had caused a scandal during the campaign) but protection from the insatiable hordes."
And I'm all, like, bingo. You'd have to be a child to recognize that this woman's form wasn't made of inviting surfaces and and appealingly fleshy shapes. As the article says elsewhere: Jackie's clothes were "body armor".
Nuthin' personal, Amy, but women often don't get this.
A few years ago I worked on this piece of television where Halle Berry graciously hosted a videotaped visit to a cancer lab at UCLA. (She was still just an attractive starlet. This was just a couple years before she got the Oscar.) She had an attractive ensemble of sportswear, notable for just one thing: The playful feathers hanging from the long sleeves. And she couldn't get past the introduction of the co-hosting oncologist without fidgeting with the feathers self-consciously. She'd realized about a half-hour too late that a noble discussion of disease is the wrong occasion for feathers. I'm certain if she'd had 30 free seconds before the tape rolled, she'd have taken them off with nail clippers, no matter how much she'd paid for the sweater.
When women say they're dressing for each other, they mean it. 'Cause they do crazy shit that means nothing for men.
(PS- I have a suspicion that in latin cultures, feathers really are alluring. Men might not really think they look cool, but they push a button labeled "Fancy!")
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at December 11, 2008 7:09 PM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2008/12/10/where_theres_st.html#comment-1612914">comment from Crid [cridcridatgmail]Julie Andrews is still sexy as hell. And great comment on Halle Berry and the feathers. And I never liked Jackie O's suits. The pillbox hats were ugly, too.
Amy Alkon
at December 11, 2008 11:29 PM
Julieandrews yucko ptoooie.
Crid [cridcridatgmail] at December 11, 2008 11:57 PM
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