Living in France, le blog

It hasn't been easy. Like most American men who didn't grow up with a family account at Brooks Brothers, I never paid too much attention to my clothes. Basically there were jeans, not jeans, shorts, shirts (with or without buttons) and suits, and some combination thereof was always enough to get me through any foreseeable social situation. What's more, I could usually find whatever I needed at Marshalls without spending the cat food money.

(I suppose that's why my wife was once able, during a single afternoon in Paris, to show me how to pick out a male American tourist based solely on the style and cut of his clothing. Surprise, surprise.)

What's more, back home the bar was never set very high: American women, most of whom are apparently unaware of just how much time, money and effort straight men are capable of putting into their appearance, don't really push the envelope, being sufficiently impressed with a clean dress shirt or suit within a size or two of the wearer; therefore, most of us don't really need to take it any further.

That is, unless there's one of them around. You know the ones I mean. Most of us small-town types don't meet one until college, and even then only when they're stealing our girlfriends. They have names like Javier, Francesco or Jean-Christophe, they look fabulous and once they brush back their salon hair and smile at your girl, you're back in your dorm playing Sonic the Hedgehog with the rest of your chick-less buddies.

Or maybe I'm still pissed off because a guy named François did that to me freshman year.

In any case, there's no use denying that European men, especially those from the so-called Latin countries, pay a whole lot more attention to their appearance than do their American counterparts. From businessmen in their tailored suits to the fit, outdoorsy fifty-plus crowd sporting Napapijri and Serge Blanco to young hipsters with Vespa bags and elegantly shaggy hair, most of these guys look pretty good: in some ways I feel like I've been receiving a real-time fashion lesson since that first airplane hit the tarmac earlier this century. I'm doing better. I think.

Anyway, notice that I said most of them. I've been here long enough now to have scientifically identified certain fashion habits of Frenchmen that are not under any circumstance to be mistaken for refinement or good taste. I would, in fact, gladly return to baggy short-sleeved button-down shirts and beige shorts with too many pockets before going so far as to imitate these gentlemen. Finally, I've got something to say besides, "ah, I wish I was wearing that."

• The ribbed zipper sweater

What is it with these things? They look terrible! At first I thought it was an occupation-related thing, as most of the guys I saw wearing them were working-class folk. That would have been okay, cultural differences, yada yada yada, but no: the other day I saw a Ralph Lauren version for about €400, and a Hugo Boss model for twice that. What's wrong with these guys? First of all, sweater-y material doesn't really work with zippers. That seems pretty basic. And all that ribbing...for whose pleasure? Yikes.

• Windshield sunglasses

These just showed up a few years ago, but they've been around too long now to be dismissed as a fad. Supermodels don't even look good in these things: why would an otherwise fit and sharp-looking Frenchman want to cover two-thirds of his carefully manicured face with overpriced plastic? The dark, shiny ones are reminiscent of Bono's insect period; the clear ones, in addition to looking ridiculous, fail even the basic test of keeping the sun out of the wearer's eyes.

• Over-the-top bling

While Dolce & Gabbana is certainly the biggest culprit, most expensive European fashion brands seem to have had their design teams infiltrated by 1970s pimps. Do you really need to cap off that sleek evening outfit with a five-inch-tall gold D&G belt buckle? Are your über-thick shiny black eyeglass frames not hipster enough without having Gucci written on the side in letters large enough to read from the other side of a subway platform? And another hint: assuming that you are not a rap star, if a gold necklace is so thick that someone could actually use it to hang you without breaking it, the necklace is probably too thick.

• The preppie decorative shoulder sweater

In America you mostly see this in movies with some sort of prep/nerd theme—it's one of the only ways to tell the two sides apart, right?—but you really have to be snobby to wear a sweater like this and mean it. Not so over here: any number of men decorate themselves with a sweater by draping the poor garment across their shoulders with no apparent sense of irony. Incidentally, the guy in the picture is conservative politician Christian Estrosi, the current mayor of Nice...which proves that this fashion faux-pas is not nearly as isolated as it should be.

• Chapkas?

I've got nothing against the furry Russian hat designed—along with large quantities of vodka—to keep men warm when it's unspeakably cold outside. I even own one, a relic of my Minnesota upbringing...but I never get it out here. You know why? BECAUSE IT'S NOT COLD ENOUGH FOR A CHAPKA IN LYON!! Despite average winter temperatures well above freezing, chapkas can be spotted in the Lyon wild from late September through early May, and I would't at all be surprised to learn that there is a summer model in the works. Like zipper-sweaters, chapkas also defy class boundaries: cheap models on the heads of young people on the subway are just as common as the haut-couture, real-fur model pictured here, often paired with silk scarves and Façonnable jackets.

• The super-tight turtleneck

It's admirable that Frenchmen are not, as a general rule, overweight, unlike in another country I can think of. One could argue, however, that America's obesity problem at least carries with it the benefit that this trend can never really take hold. I mean, would you want to see Drew Carey in one of these? Apparently, being fit enables certain trends best left on the runway—where models wear things normal people wouldn't touch—to be seen in the wild. Seriously: could you push the definition of "metrosexual" any further than a silky-smooth, skin-tight turtleneck? The only thing I own that's this tight is Under Armour, and I believe the name says it all.

OK, I'll stop now. Sorry about that: it just felt good to strike back a little bit after so many years of fashion insecurity. Now, if I could just get my JC Penney's blazer taken in and stop wearing old running shoes to the movies...