Chapeau Noir: Listen to How Cheap Chic Travels !
You've got a favorite photo from your last vacation, right?
Mine is of moi in Paris on the Champs Elysee. I'm posed at the
edge of boredom. After all, I am an American in Paris, and can't
look too exited.
Looming large in the photo behind me is the famous Louis Vutton
store. Ladies, you know what I'm talking about. Gentlemen, if
you don't, you are better off not knowing. This knowledge will
cost you.
The Louis store is a temple to designer excess, fashioned as a
towering classic leather trunk bag. It has a Land of the Giants
feel, and, "the little people" with deep pockets enter this
palace of style, awed by its scale and grandeur. The French have
built it, and people come. And people buy. Thousands of francs
per day are spent there even in the face of a declining dollar
by style conscious Americans in Paris like moi.
But I didn't spend. Instead I had my picture snapped in front of
the faux leather facade. Me, the queen of faux, I am standing
tall in my digital photo in other people's clothes.
You see, nearly everything I wear is lovingly broken in by
someone before I buy it. So my favorite photo is me walking a
mile on the celebrated French street of stylish dreams in
someone else's shoes. Literally. Thrift store or East side NY
designer consignment, I've tried them all. But there is more to
parlez-vous. I score big in Paris. And I don't even go into the
Louis store. My favorite photo chronicles me at an important
moment. I am on the verge of the biggest fashion score of my
consignment career. Unknowingly, I'm ready to hit the mother
load. And those who are spending their Euros in the Palace of
Vuton have a lesson to learn that I will soon teach on the
streets of Paris: cheap can be so chic.
Killer style in Paris is not housed on runways or within the
grand walls of the fashion giants, but shelved in small
consignment stores in the side streets of the City of Lights.
And it is style that takes you to scale new fashion heights...or
in this case widths.
What I bought in Paris is a hat the size of Texas, Black. Le
Chapeau Noir of any woman's dreams, the hat that rivals Audrey
Hepburns's Ascot straw, designed by Edith Head for My Fair Lady.
One of a kind, and one hell of a price. Now, think back to Louis
Vuton where my "sistahs" are laying down thousands of dollars to
carry a genuine French Louis purse. Me, I am opening my own
Vuton knock off bag, a clutch Louis -- direct from Canal Street
NYC--spending 40 euros. And it buys someone else's black shiny
straw hat. Okay it's bigger than a pizza. But Kate Winslet
regally wore a similar the chapeau in the opening scene from
Titanic. Why not me?
And did I need a hat that dramatic? Absolutement!. I was going
to a wedding on the Siene the next day and I would meet the
challenge of style suited to a Parisienne yacht wedding at dusk.
And I would do it without forking over the equivalent of a
mortgage payment. That alone created high drama.
As I carried my purchase to the taxi for the ride to the hotel,
I had a feeling that the hat had changed everything for me on
that trip.
My first clue that things were going to be different was simply
getting in a taxi.
I love to walk in Paris, but my fabulous hat was presenting
problems as I carried it along the Rue St. Honore. It was
drawing sidelong looks from passersby and getting in the way of
pedestrians as I navigated the twisting street, so for time and
convenience sake, we took a cab. The hat rode in the front of
the taxi while my husband and I shared the back seat. Little did
we know that the hat was now in the driver seat for the rest of
our stay.
Another indicator that the hat was exceeding its purchase value
came later that evening. Upon returning to the room from
dinner,I scolded my husband for moving the hat to the hotel's
window ledge risking the chance that it might fall to the
courtyard below. He emphatically denied touching the bargain,
thus giving way to the obvious: either the turn down maid had
found the hat irresistible as moi and had tried on the chapeau,
or the hat had taken it upon itself to travel.
The allure of the 40 Euro French chapeau continued. It inspired
me.
The next evening, I wore the hat with a consigned, strapless
cocktail dress, making me feel like some cross between Andy Mc
Dowell in Four Weddings and a Funeral and Natasha in Rocky and
Bullwinkle. I bought black lace stockings and had the
overwhelming urge to don a pair of sleek black sunglasses to top
off the effect.
So strong was my impression of a Parisian somebody as I stood
across from the Louve, that the doorman of the Hotel pleaded
with me to return to the lobby. He was trying to hail a cab to
take us to the River Siene. The hat was stopping traffic. Horns
blared and French curses filled the air. Even the most jaded
Parisian seemed taken with the sight. A tour bus group of
Japanese visitors nearby me, could not resist pointing their
cameras," Le Chapeau Noir" became the final stop on the tour. I
found myself instinctively taking on the pose in the Louis
photo, look bored. Look stylish.
The hat had was now in charge.
The rest of the evening was memorable for the Chapeau Noir. It
was the hit of the yacht wedding, challenging the bride's own
tasteful beige tulle hat, and mocking it with its striking
presence. And did women love it. The hat was passed around from
guest to guest, photographed to the point of distraction. Women
who did not smoke cigarettes lit up when wearing the hat. I
suspected that my theory about the chambermaid was true. The hat
was irresistible. It had to be experiencd. It danced the night
away on the heads of young and old and finished the evening at
the Bastille where it was worn briefly by a charming French
waiter who served up the last bottle of champagne at 5:00 in the
morning in an all night caf