FIN DE COLLECTION
A friend told me to buy a red dress in Paris because I am leaving my husband. The right teller can make any tale, the right dresser can make any dress. Listen to me carefully: I am not the right teller.
Even to be static in Saint Germain requires money. The white stone hotels charge so much a night just to stay still. So much is displayed in the windows: so little bought and sold. The women of the quarter are all over forty and smell of new shoe leather. I walk the streets with them. It is impossible to see what kind of woman could inhabit the dresses on display—but some do, some must.
We turn into Le Bon Marché, the women and I.
Le Bon Marché is divided into departments: fashion, food, home. It is possible to find yourself in the wrong department, but nothing bad can happen here. Le Bon Marché is always the same and always different, like those postcards where the Eiffel Tower is shown a hundred ways: in the sun, in fog, in sunsets, in snow. There are no postcards of the Eiffel Tower in the rain but it does rain in Paris, even in August, and when it does you can shelter in Le Bon Marché, running between the two ground-floor sections with one of its large orange bags suspended over your head (too short a dash to open an umbrella).
Fin de collection d’été. In Le Bon Marché it is already autumn. In 95 degree heat, we bury our faces in wool and corduroy. We long for frost, we who have waited so long for summer. In the passerelle , the walkway between the store’s two buildings, a tape-loop breeze, the sound of water, photographs of a beach.
Je peux vous aider? the salesgirl asks the fat woman with angel’s wings tattooed across her back. The woman mouths, non , and walks, with her thin companion, into the passarelle , suspended.
The first effect of abroad is strangeness. It makes me strange to myself. I experience a transfer, a transparency. I do not look like these women. I want to project these women’s looks onto mine and with them all the history that has made these women look like themselves and not like me.
There is something about my face in the mirrors that catch it. Even at a distance it will never be right again, not even to a casual glance. Beauty: it’s the upkeep that costs, that’s what Balzac said, not the initial investment.
From time to time I change my mind and sell my clothes. I sell the striped ones and buy spotted ones. Then I sell the spotted ones and buy plaid. To change clothes is to take a plunge, to holiday. The thin girl in her checked jacket looks more appropriate than I do, though her clothes are cheaper. This makes me angry. How did her look slip by me? I was always too young. And now I am too old.
I cannot forgive her. I forgive only the beauties of past eras: the pasty flappers, the pointed New Look-ers. They are no longer beautiful and cannot harm me now. Even your other women seemed tame until I saw the attention you paid them. I no longer know the value of anything. And if you do not see me, I am nothing. From the outside I look together. I forget that I am really no worse than anyone else. But how can I go on with nobody? And how, and when, and where can I be inflamed by your glance? I can’t be friends with your friends. I can’t go to dinner with you, don’t even want to.
But why does the fat woman always travel with the thin woman? Why the one less beautiful with one more beautiful? Why do there have to be two women, one always better than the other?
Je peux vous aider?
Non.
There are no red dresses in Le Bon Marché. It isn’t the dress: it’s the woman in the dress. (Chanel. Or Yves Saint Laurent.) Parisiennes wear gray, summer and winter: they provide their own color. Elegance is refusal. (Chanel. Or YSL. Or someone.) To leave empty-handed is a triumph.
In any case, come December the first wisps of lace and chiffon will appear and with them bottomless skies reflected blue in mirror swimming pools.
To other people, perhaps, I still
A friend told me to buy a red dress in Paris because I am leaving my husband. The right teller can make any tale, the right dresser can make any dress. Listen to me carefully: I am not the right teller.
Even to be static in Saint Germain requires money. The white stone hotels charge so much a night just to stay still. So much is displayed in the windows: so little bought and sold. The women of the quarter are all over forty and smell of new shoe leather. I walk the streets with them. It is impossible to see what kind of woman could inhabit the dresses on display—but some do, some must.
We turn into Le Bon Marché, the women and I.
Le Bon Marché is divided into departments: fashion, food, home. It is possible to find yourself in the wrong department, but nothing bad can happen here. Le Bon Marché is always the same and always different, like those postcards where the Eiffel Tower is shown a hundred ways: in the sun, in fog, in sunsets, in snow. There are no postcards of the Eiffel Tower in the rain but it does rain in Paris, even in August, and when it does you can shelter in Le Bon Marché, running between the two ground-floor sections with one of its large orange bags suspended over your head (too short a dash to open an umbrella).
Fin de collection d’été. In Le Bon Marché it is already autumn. In 95 degree heat, we bury our faces in wool and corduroy. We long for frost, we who have waited so long for summer. In the passerelle , the walkway between the store’s two buildings, a tape-loop breeze, the sound of water, photographs of a beach.
Je peux vous aider? the salesgirl asks the fat woman with angel’s wings tattooed across her back. The woman mouths, non , and walks, with her thin companion, into the passarelle , suspended.
The first effect of abroad is strangeness. It makes me strange to myself. I experience a transfer, a transparency. I do not look like these women. I want to project these women’s looks onto mine and with them all the history that has made these women look like themselves and not like me.
There is something about my face in the mirrors that catch it. Even at a distance it will never be right again, not even to a casual glance. Beauty: it’s the upkeep that costs, that’s what Balzac said, not the initial investment.
From time to time I change my mind and sell my clothes. I sell the striped ones and buy spotted ones. Then I sell the spotted ones and buy plaid. To change clothes is to take a plunge, to holiday. The thin girl in her checked jacket looks more appropriate than I do, though her clothes are cheaper. This makes me angry. How did her look slip by me? I was always too young. And now I am too old.
I cannot forgive her. I forgive only the beauties of past eras: the pasty flappers, the pointed New Look-ers. They are no longer beautiful and cannot harm me now. Even your other women seemed tame until I saw the attention you paid them. I no longer know the value of anything. And if you do not see me, I am nothing. From the outside I look together. I forget that I am really no worse than anyone else. But how can I go on with nobody? And how, and when, and where can I be inflamed by your glance? I can’t be friends with your friends. I can’t go to dinner with you, don’t even want to.
But why does the fat woman always travel with the thin woman? Why the one less beautiful with one more beautiful? Why do there have to be two women, one always better than the other?
Je peux vous aider?
Non.
There are no red dresses in Le Bon Marché. It isn’t the dress: it’s the woman in the dress. (Chanel. Or Yves Saint Laurent.) Parisiennes wear gray, summer and winter: they provide their own color. Elegance is refusal. (Chanel. Or YSL. Or someone.) To leave empty-handed is a triumph.
In any case, come December the first wisps of lace and chiffon will appear and with them bottomless skies reflected blue in mirror swimming pools.
To other people, perhaps, I still
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