A Chic Paris Lockdown – Day 8 – Summer Style

        April 27, 2020

Fiona Ferris calls Day 8 “Be Chic In The Summer” in her book, 30 More Chic Days. Fiona writes about how she keeps her “chic” when temperatures and humidity are high. She addresses wardrobe, hair and skincare.

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, this “Day” is particularly appropriate because summer is rapidly approaching. I looked at two parts of this chapter: clothes and hair.

When I live in the US, I’m in a very hot, humid Southern state. To compound the challenge, most indoor spaces like grocery stores or department stores have the air-conditioning temperature set very low. I kid you not, I keep a light-weight jacket in my car in the summer just to put on when I go inside my favorite grocery store! I keep my house air conditioning set at 75 degrees F (24 C) so that my “summer” clothes are comfortable inside the house as well as outside. (I receive more happiness spending money on a fun trip then I do spending money on my utilities bill.) I do put the a/c a bit lower at night (around 70 F (21 C) so the bedrooms are cooler.

Given that it’s unrelentingly hot and humid at my US house from the end of April through the beginning of October, I usually wear cotton t-shirts with cotton skirts and sandals or light-weight cotton dresses with some kind of tie belt also with sandals.  I wear loose cotton shorts with a light cotton t-shirt and tennies for my early-morning walk each day before breakfast. I get most of my summer wear from Talbots, Lands End and Brooks Brothers for Women outlet stores and occasionally on eBay.

Here in Paris, the climate is very different. This morning I wore jeans, a turtleneck cotton sweater, a silk scarf, and my down puffy jacket on my early morning walk. The temperature was 54 F (12 C). At lunchtime, I wore the same clothing but without the down jacket when I stepped outside to pick up a baguette. It’s 73 F (23 C) with very low humidity and a pleasant, slightly cool breeze. My Paris plan for clothing as the weather gets warmer is to introduce light-weight cotton short-sleeved sweaters and matching cardigans (the preppy twinset) with my light-weight jeans or 2 cotton skirts. As it grows warmer, I will switch to my cotton t-shirts (collared and collarless) with trousers and skirts and my light-weight cotton dresses with rolled-up sleeves (I have 2 dresses with long sleeves that can be rolled up and 2 short sleeve dresses). I can layer with light cotton scarves or cotton cardigans for breezy days or cooler mornings. I rarely see anyone except children or teen-agers wearing shorts out and about. A good European brand that has casual summer wear that is both pretty and affordable is Uniqlo. I enjoy browsing Paris’s pretty clothing stores but I find that many of them can be pricey!

My real challenge for summer in Paris is the footwear! On a typical (non-lockdown) Paris day, I walk between 16,000 and 22,000 steps on cobblestoned streets or paved sidewalks. I have found that completely flat, thin-soled shoes do not provide enough support and padding for that kind of walking. I tried a 2-inch (5 cm) Naturalizer wedge sandal (with a 1/2 in (1 cm) “platform” under the ball of the foot) with a soft flexible sole last Spring. The shoe itself was very comfortable. I chose a style that didn’t have a heel strap which turned out to be a mistake. I walk pretty fast so sometimes I would lose my shoe if I was in a hurry! And, sometimes my foot would slip slightly to one side or the other. This summer, I have the same basic sandal but with a heel strap to keep my foot more firmly in place. I chose a neutral, skin color for the sandal so it will go with everything.  For my canvas penny-loafers, I have arch support inserts to protect my feet from all the pounding on the hard surfaces. Yes, my feet will feel more fatigued at the end of the day during the summer than they do in my beautiful, thick-soled, arch-supported, water-proof winter tall boots that I wear every day during the winter. But summer is lovely and I can always take a Paracetamol (Tylenol).

Now, let’s talk hair. Lockdown has kept me from a trim so my hair is now long enough to be pulled back into a high ponytail or into a high, messy bun. When the weather gets warm enough that my hair is hot on the back of my neck, I will pull it up and back. I like Fiona’s idea of using a leave-in conditioner and a skinny cotton scarf to wrap around a bun or a ponytail. I’ll keep my eye out for such a cotton scarf and see if I like the look (I’m pretty sure that I will.) I also wear a straw hat that I picked up at a street market on sunny days. I had issues last summer with my hair being slightly too short so that the ponytail was too low to wear the hat comfortably.  This summer, I think my hair is long enough that I can pull it higher and tuck it under the hat brim for really hot days. (So, maybe there is a silver lining to all this lockdown stuff!)

Please leave a comment if you have any suggestions on how to help us all feel luxe and chic this summer!