ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT HAIR

One of the Parisienne’s most distinctive features is her head of hair. There are several characteristics that make it easy to identify. Her hairstyle is never “immaculate” and it’s rare that she goes for a blowout. She cultivates, depending on her age, a type of capillary blur, to varying degrees of tidiness. But make no mistake, this is a very carefully organized chaos.

HOW: Do not dye your hair, or if you do, only in your original color to highlight it, or to hide any gray. This rule is more or less followed by everyone: you keep the color Mother Nature chose for you.

Do not dry your hair with a hair dryer (in fact, you might as well throw your hair dryer away) but instead use two much more environmentally friendly resources: fresh air in summer and a towel in winter. Whenever possible, wash your hair in the evening rather than in the morning, so as not to leave the house with wet hair.

Falling asleep with damp hair will give it a more interesting shape when you wake up. It’s not worth washing your hair every day, as it’s usually on the following day (or even the day after that, depending on the texture of your hair) that your hair gains a certain weight that in turn gives it the right volume when tied up in a bun.

There’s no point in accessorizing your hair: avoid hair clips or headbands if you’re over eighteen, but also hair jewelry or any other kind of decorative accessory.

And as your face gets messier with age, your hair can get neater, for balance.

Bless that magical time in summer when your hair, with some sea water and sunshine, becomes simply perfect: a little bit rough, a little bit lighter, and a little bit salty.

And, of course, a touch of perfume on your hair, behind your ear, or on the nape of your neck, never did anyone any harm …

ON PLASTIC SURGERY

Parisiennes do not have plastic surgery, because they believe you need to know how to accept the body your mother created with such attention and care. And not only accept it, but enhance it through a fastidious and passionate regime of self-awareness. Of course, this is what they’ll have you—as well as their men—believe. But it’s not true.

Until recently, plastic surgery in France was considered to be the symptom of two worrying problems: futile obsessions and manic depression. Things have evolved and now Parisiennes do have work done on their bodies and faces. But, as always, they do so their own way, that is to say they stick to certain rules. It’s all about moderation.

HOW: First choose one part to focus on, one single operation. The one thing that bothers you the most. Either your nose or the area around your mouth, your breasts, or your tummy … Next, put off for as long as possible the age at which you first have work done. In France it is rare to find a thirty-five-year-old who has had plastic surgery. Generally, the fight begins in your forties, often with the help of hyaluronic acid or Botox (you should resort to the latter not more than once a year, or else you run the risk of it becoming visible). Having waited patiently, thanks to these preliminary procedures, the first small lifts are contemplated after the age of fifty: your eyelids, the bags under your eyes, or the wrinkles around your mouth. Then, at the age of sixty, you can think about maybe getting a “mini-lift.”

Surgery is not, as in certain countries, an external symbol of wealth. A measure of its success is that it is undetectable. Indeed, in Paris, you don’t talk about it, you don’t tell people. The main thing is to avoid any operation that distorts or that might turn a woman into a statue or a doll.

ON SKIN

Skin should look natural. Freckles can appear in spring along with the first rays of sunshine. Sometimes your cheekbones blush when you lie, and your whole face flushes when you are intimidated. You must not stifle the stories behind the natural coloring of your skin. For this reason, it must be shown, revealed, exposed.

HOW: Frenchwomen avoid using foundation, which merely serves as a shroud and therefore trivializes.

There is a whole range of invisible artifices that can be used instead. Invisible and yet convincing—it is all about the varnish. In the same way as painters would “prepare” their canvas before adding any color (these preparations were kept secret and their recipe would disappear with the artist at his death), the skin of your face must be treated as a canvas.

Start with a moisturizer to smooth your skin, which professionals swear by. Then hide any imperfections (bags under your eyes, the sides of your nose, pimples) with concealers (such as Yves Saint Laurent’s Touche Éclat) or a BB cream. If you really can’t live without your foundation, then mix it with a touch of moisturizer to mute its effect. And a few strokes of mascara (Hypnôse by Lancôme)—be generous on your top and bottom lashes, to accentuate your look and disguise any bags under your eyes—and bright red lipstick (Dior Addict) will not go amiss for a night out.

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 806