News from Eastern Paris
Welcome to warmth! In Paris, it has finally turned summerful (summer-like + wonderful).
Seriously, with November having lasted seven months here, no one wants to talk about the weather. We’re only really discussing it now that the trauma of the past season is behind us.
Besides, the weather is the dullest of conversation (non-)starters, or at best, a diplomatic one. As Marianne Faithfull once sang, “…all over the world strangers talk only about the weather.” (Faithfull is so highly regarded in France that she was appointed Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters.)
As I bid goodbye to the last of my study abroad students earlier this week, I took stock of their experiences with Parisian weather. Most of the time they were here, students were woefully underdressed, and usually half-undressed.
They wore ripped jeans whose gaping knee holes left extra fabric dangling nearly to the ground. Some wore gauzy “dresses” that looked more like a negligee, and still others donned low-cut shirts, breasts akimbo, and midriff-baring crop tops that left me seeing more belly buttons in the past two months than I care to see, ever.
Before these pretty young things arrived, we’d given them instructions:
“Please dress in layers.”
“Bring an umbrella.”
“Always have a windbreaker or rain jacket with you, just in case.”
“Wear sturdy shoes.”
But somehow, we just didn’t manage to get through to these students.
During the program, I sincerely tried to empathize with them. When I was their age, I knew that being young didn’t look like much fun if I didn’t get to wear clothes that showed off my semi-buff 20-year-old bod. And never flouting the rules seemed pretty boring.
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And who wants to believe the gloomy adults who tell us that temperatures are only going to be in the mid-60s?
Apparently, it’s so much more interesting to stand around shivering, arms wrapped around one’s own body in an attempt to preserve warmth.
As my favorite French teacher used to say….
“Education is wasted on the young.”
Meanwhile, we teachers were often dressed, all at once, in:
A silk blouse,
a thin wool cardigan,
a jean jacket,
a parka,
a small silk scarf,
AND an enormous scarf over top of the smaller one.
Because we are now grown-ups: responsible, infallible, and always prepared. We are all quite familiar with adulting. Right?
Not always. I’ve been caught out more times than I can count, and my tour guests have been occasionally unprepared for the weather during our mostly-outdoor jaunts to a local Parisian market.
But it’s understandable: this past spring has seen some unseasonably wacky weather! So I’ve been studying how Parisians dress for success in terrible météo conditions.
Here are my top tips for winning the weather in Paris when it throws anything and everything your way.
THE BASICS
Without fail, always have with you a fold-up rain jacket and/or windbreaker-type coat, EVEN WHEN THE WEATHER LOOKS NICE as you leave your accomodation.
Wear natural fibers like silk and cotton, and very fine wool works wonders.
Men can wear an undershirt, like the old-fashioned marcel or terribly-named “wife-beater.”
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Bring many layers of clothing, which you can remove when the sun peeks out from behind a cloud and then put back on when a gust of wind blows through the Luxembourg Gardens, for example. The French call this le layering or the onion technique.
An enormous scarf has saved my back more times than I can recall, and I lend it to guests even more often than I wear it. Call it what you like — a pashmina, a warm shawl — this scarf has to be big, so you can wrap up in it. It also works well for flights as an extra blanket and/or pillow, or to cover your eyes if you’ve forgotten your light-blocking silk sleep mask. But you wouldn’t forget that, right?
PRO TIPS FOR MASTERING THE ART OF THE MÉTÉO
When the weather looks doubtful, wear narrow-bottomed pants. Wide pants tend to get wet on the bottom (not to mention getting caught in metro doors, taxi doors, revolving doors, and most any other door).
Always have a change of shoes in your bag, just in case. They can be ultra-light plastic shoes, for men or women.
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Bring (or buy here in Paris, more fun) a sturdy parka or trench coat, which you can dress up if needed with a long necklace like a sautoir.
We Americans are often accused in France of being too “matchy-matchy.” The other day I saw a woman here wearing a floral blouse with striped pants, and no one raised an eyebrow. More questionable yet was the mismatched patterns in an outfit I wore to the Ritz-Escoffier cooking school last week, where I crossed paths with the talented head chef of the Michelin-starred Espadon restaurant, Eugénie Béziat.
Wear a long skirt with tennis shoes. Dressier baskets like Stan Smiths are perfect, and even Parisians of a “certain age” wear them. The advantage of a long skirt is that you can put on warm tights underneath, or even footless tights with semi-open shoes.
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And what do you think about Nancy Wall Hopkins’ look, in this Instagram post? I find her tips are spot-on!
![https://www.instagram.com/p/C8M3qlcRWDX/?hl=en&img_index=1 https://www.instagram.com/p/C8M3qlcRWDX/?hl=en&img_index=1](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F904acfbf-7f03-4145-893b-7d512b555971_424x491.png)
Don’t forget your boots! Last month, people were still wearing knee-high boots, and now that it’s June, we’re seeing lots of low boots on the most dour (and dire!) days… They’re intemporal — timeless — and Parisians wear them all summer long when the weather’s feeling a bit Novemberish. -AZ
On the table this weekend…
Despite the recent trials and tribulations surrounding the rainy and cold climate, I feel entirely confident in telling you that we will be eating many salads in the days and weeks to come.
In our household of two competent cooks, David-Nicolas (my Frenchman) and I share the meal preparation in complementary styles. While I enjoy making French sauces, Indian dishes, Thai curries, and long-cooking wintery stews like Beef Bourguignon, David-Nicolas long ago proclaimed his life-long reign as King of the Salad. And he can whip up dinner in no time.
One of our family’s favorites is the Salade niçoise. The first time the kids tried our simplified version, shown here, they were dubious.
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But the salad shown here depicts a bit of niçoise blasphemy: green beans! So even if we love ‘em, there are decidedly no green beans in the classic iteration of the salad.
The best and most authoritative recipe for Salade niçoise is to be found in my friend Rosa Jackson’s new cookbook, Niçoise: Market-Inspired Cooking from France's Sunniest City.
And I can’t wait to use her book! I’ll be buying it directly from the source – Rosa herself – when I visit Nice this summer and take a much-anticipated Street Food Tour.
My sister and I will be tasting the crispy, satisfying, and often peppery chickpea pancake called socca. Even though I’ve researched a bit of the history behind the most famous food of Nice, I’m yearning to learn more.
Other delicacies await us, like the caramelized onion and anchovy tart known as pissaladière, or market-fresh cheeses, and the fruitiest Provençal olive oils. The Italian influence on Nice’s foods is undeniable, and we’re so looking forward to all the nibbles and sips that we’ll be taking along the tiny little streets of vieux Nice, or old city.
In the meantime, we’ll probably still be eating our blasphemous version of Salade niçoise here in Paris.