Let Them Eat Crème Brulée!

My fabulous friend Plumcake has many wonderful qualities, and among the best of them is the fact that she somehow contrived to get herself born on Bastille Day, thereby ensuring a lifetime of perfectly good reasons to be taken to a French restaurant at least once a year. How clever was that of her? And how clever am I, to have made friends with her and therefore to have the opportunity to take her to said French restaurant?

Of course, because I am a dedicated fashionista, I determined that Plumcake's birthday dinner at Chez Nous on Bastille Day was a very special occasion that required a wardrobe to match. An all-French wardrobe, to be precise. (Liberté! Égalité! Gaultier!) Okay, some of it is because I'm a fashionista, but mostly it's because I'm a silly, silly woman who happens to be a mad francophile. Also, lately, I've been very intrigued by the idea of wearing my Hermès scarves as halter tops, and I thought this was the time to do it. Seriously -- if I don't get to go to a bal des pompiers and hang out with the gorgeous Parisian firemen, the least I can do is eat crème brulée while swathed in Hermès, right?

Now, this is risky. Not because the halter idea is very daring -- when you're as small-busted as I am, overexposure is pretty much a non-issue. The risk comes because French food? Can be messy. All those yummy sauces? They drip. The butter. The cream. The crumbly bread. Fraught with messiness, and I am a notoriously careless eater, and the wine doesn't help with that. Also, I'm a gesticulator. It's difficult for me to make a point -- hell, it's difficult for me to form a sentence -- without an accompanying hand motion. So get me all worked up over one of my pet peeves (Crocs, say. Or Juicy Couture sweatpants.) while I've got a forkful of truite amandine and there's no telling what might happen. (Although it would be unconscionably cruel to bring up those subjects with me while I was enjoying French food. Whaddya wanna do, gimme the agita?) So I'll need to go slow and be careful. This is not a bad thing, it will help me to savor my meal.

I have two Hermès scarves, both acquired on my last trip to Paris. This is my Jardins d'Hiver



I'm sorry, this is a terrible photo, but trust me when I say it's a work of art. And this is my Jeu d'Omnibus:


But how best to do this?

First, I did some experimenting on my own.



This is very simple -- I tied two corners around my neck, and two corners around my waist, and voila! A top! It required some futzing, I rolled the tied ends at the neck a few times to create more of a cord effect and take up some of the extra fabric. I like this -- it's quite full on the front, but that makes it seem luxurious, with all that billowy fabric, and it does a good job of showing off the design of the scarf. Also, this method gives it the most length, which I prefer with the skirt I'm going to wear with it -- I want the scarf to come down over the waistband of the skirt a bit.

Next I tried the method recommended by Hermès:




This is also extremely simple, three knots instead of two. First, you tie a knot in the very center of the scarf on the reverse side to take up the slack in the fabric. And then you do what I did the first time -- two ends around the neck, two ends around the waist. This gives a much more fitted effect, which is nice, and shows off the bright blue border of the scarf, which is a color that does wonders for me. The downside is that it's shorter, you can't see the design as well, and you've got a big ol' knot pressed up against your sternum. (It's a knot of Hermès silk, of course, so it's not exactly torture.)

So these two methods are both great with the Jardins d'Hiver, but when I tried them with my Jeu d'Omnibus, I couldn't manage them. The blue scarf is a classic 90 x 90 cm size, but the pink scarf is a vintage style, which means it's smaller -- only 70 x 70 cm. That makes it too small to fit around my ribcage and knot in the back. Hmmmmmmm, what to do? So I did some surfing on the Series of Tubes and found (oh, I wish I could remember where) this:


Brilliant!!! Put on a fairly substantial necklace. Fold the scarf in half diagonally to make a triangle. Bring the points of the triangle up and tie them in a knot around the necklace, and the bottom points around your waist. This is genius, and I love the way it looks with this scarf, whose circular design really works well here. It fits very closely and feels very secure. I also tried this with the blue one:


Looks great, but it feels a little less secure because there's more fabric and so it's looser on the sides. Still -- pretty fab, non?

So I'm all set. I have also found a diagram for wearing the scarf as a one-shoulder sarong-kinda thing, but the geometry is more complicated and I've yet to master it. Saving that for a day when I've got a little more time and patience. And maybe someone to help, because a gal could pull a muscle trying to reach around herself to tie those knots.

And since we're speaking of birthdays, mine is coming up next month and I've decided that I want my birthday treat to myself to be this:

This pattern is called Jungle Love. Isn't that the most amazing thing? This isn't the colorway I'm after -- there's a red version that you can see here. Oh, it's just ravishing, I love it like a boyfriend. So I've set myself a goal. I'm socking away my pennies in my Luxury Tithe, and if I can go a month without buying any shoes, clothes or other fashion items, I'll treat myself to a new scarf for my birthday. It really shouldn't be that hard for me to stay on a No Buy for a month -- I've shopped my brains out over the last few months. In my defense, a lot of my wardrobe was no longer wearable due to my weight loss. Seriously -- even some of my shoes are now too big. But I've filled in the gaps pretty admirably and now I need to just work what I have and give the charge cards a breather. I know my friend Deja Pseu over at Une Femme d'un Certain Age is also on a No Buy -- so now you've got a No Buy Buddy, Deja! Anyone else who wants to join in, feel free to hop on the bandwagon!

Oh, and Joyeux Fête Nationale to all!!





Photos: Style Spy, Luxury-Scarves.com

My Favorite Mistake

Well, since Plumcake already outed me, I guess I'd better spill. Here's what I brought home from Paris:


I went on this trip determined to bring back two souvenirs, one each from London and Paris. My London item was another bottle of one of my Top Three perfumes, Tolu by Ormonde Jayne, about which I have spoken here before.

The other one was an Hermes scarf.



The scarf design is called "Jeu des Omnibuses et Dames Blanches." It was the very first design ever made into an Hermes scarf in 1928, and has been reissued several times in different colorways. (I'd love to see what the original looked like, if anyone knows how to get that info.) I'd seen the scarf in a magazine advertisement in the black and white colorway and was very taken with its graphic quality, but when I got to the boutique the scarf (carré, as they're sometimes known) revealed itself to have a background of mostly light gray, which is a color I try to never, ever wear next to my face. So the nice SA smiled and brought out this one. This is a vintage carré, which means it's a little smaller than the regular ones -- 70 x 70 cm instead of 90 x 90.


The detail on these things are really phenomenal -- these scarves are works of art, and if you do a little research on the interwebs (which I did), you'll discover that if kept in good condition they never depreciate. They're like buying jewelry. They get mentioned in peoples' wills. They never go out of style. It doesn't matter what size you are, they will always fit. These are just a few of the justifications I came up with for dropping a wad of cash on what is basically a big square of fabric.

I've been really doing more of the scarf thing in the last year or so, brought about mainly by four trips to Paris in the last three years. I have some great ones that I got from my mom & grandma, some nice vintage finds, and I've treated myself to a couple of Ferragamos from the outlet near here. I have friends who say they never wear scarves because it makes them feel sort of mumsy and frumpy, but when you see the way Parisian women pull it off it puts a whole new spin on things. Watch enough of these creatures walk past with various knots and bows across necks and collarbones and shoulders, and suddenly a big printed square of silk fabric tied about your person in some manner seems an absolute requirement for style and a signifier of chic.

It's also a great way to disguise your tourist status. Tie an Hermes scarf around your neck and put away your plan de Paris and it's almost a guarantee that before you know it people will be speaking blazing fast French to you whether you want them to or not. (Of course, if you still insist on wearing bright white tennis shoes and a sweatshirt embroidered with the name of your alma mater, you can be wrapped head toe to in Hermes scarves and it's not going to help. Make an effort, people.) That's what happened to me, anyway. It was flattering but disconcerting at times. "Je suis desolée, madame, votre francais est trop vite pour moi," is now a phrase that rolls off my tongue pretty easily.

Like I said, these are expensive little shmattes. And you can get them in the duty-free sections of the airport, but I believe that the money you don't save buying it at the boutique is paying for the absolutely delightful experience of walking into one of the most historic and exclusive fashion houses in Paris and knowing you're about to make a purchase.

And the scarf counter is particularly lovely -- it runs a long distance down one side of the main room, and there is an army of black-clad SAs waiting to unfurl these beauties and spread them on the counter for you, to knot them around your neck, to hold them up to your face and cock their heads as they consider the color against your skin. One of the things I love about Paris is that customer service jobs (especially in high-end establishments) are not taken quite so lightly as they are here; they're not merely placeholder jobs that you do while you're finishing up college, they're careers. And so behind the scarf counter you see all sorts of people, from young men who couldn't be more than 23 to older women who've obviously been doing this a good long time and have now forgotten more about scarves and chic than I will ever even know. All dressed in black, bien sûr. And beautifully accessorized.

So I wore my scarf around Paris and I was very happy and then it came time to leave Paris and that's when some sort of madness struck me. It's a familiar madness, mind you, but no less dangerous for that.

I didn't have trouble getting to the airport the morning I left, despite the transit strike that was going on. From Saint Germain in a taxi it only took me about 40 minutes. Going the other direction, however, as all the folks who live in the Parisian suburbs and work in the city (and there are lots; like Manhattan, Paris is physically a very small city with lots of commuters) tried to get to work without the benefit of commuter trains, it was a complete nightmare. My cab driver, who spoke an interesting and entertaining combination of English, French, and Chinese (Franglese?) told me that according to reports from the other cabbies, he was looking at a three-hour drive to get back into town. And because of whatever rules & regulations are imposed on cabbies, he was not permitted to pick up a fare at the airport. So fully half his day was spent on one fare -- moi. I felt pretty crummy about this and made sure I tipped him.

Charles de Gaulle was the usual madness and crush of tourists, many of whose luggage situations made me feel like my enormous Samsonite (the Beast) was traveling light. (Seriously -- some of these people could have attached engines to their suitcases and driven them to wherever they were going.) Alas, my flight was delayed. And yet -- even though my plane was not boarding until two hours later than its originally scheduled time, they were closing the check-in line an hour before the original flight time. So I stood in line for 45 minutes and checked the Beast and was told that they couldn't re-book my connecting flight in Houston from this counter (I decided not to press the matter by saying something like, "Um, why not? Is your computer an underachiever?") (I was re-booked very quickly & efficiently a short time later by a very helpful clerk at the gate who was very nice to me while muttering under her breath the whole time -- in English and French -- about the stupidity of the people in the front of the airport. Makes me wonder if there's some sort of front-of-house/back-of-house rivalry that goes on and results in rumbles on the jetways late at night. Probably not.)

Long story short (oh, like that ever happens around here...), it was now about 10:30 in the morning and my plane was not due to board until three hours later and I was loose in Charles de Gaulle airport with too much time, a head slightly fuzzy from lack of sleep, and a credit card in my wallet.

I don't know if you've ever been in CDG airport. I've only been in the part of the terminal where American airlines fly people in & out of the US and it is actually a pretty unpleasant place. It's old & rundown and just generally not very inviting. The way they make up for that is to plop a panorama of delicious duty-free shopping smack in the middle of this florescent-and-linoleum hinterland. Lots of duty-free, from places like Galeries Lafayette and Longchamp... and Hermes.

As I walked past the Hermes boutique I beheld a classic scene: a well-suited French man carrying a briefcase, choosing a scarf for someone. He was very particular. It was taking a while to find just the right color in just the right design. There was a dune of silk piled up on the top of the display case. Like a child walking past a candy counter, I couldn't resist. All those beautiful colors were just beckoning to me...

Not too much later, there was this:



This one is called Jardin d'Hiver (Winter Garden) and the detail in this design is spectacular. Click on theses photos to get the larger version so that you can really see what's going on in this scarf.






And so. Here ends my tale of overspending. Actually, it doesn't end here, or I should say I fear it won't. Because I've discovered a wonderful site that is only going to feed my newest obsession, and look what I found there:

I must have it. I MUST! It's my Shine on a scarf!!! Look!


The pattern is called Cave Felem, and if anyone knows where I can get one...

See? See? Oh, I'm in trouble...

Photos: Style Spy, FashionWireDaily.com, Luxury-Scarves.com