The resonantly ramshackle rues of Barbès-Rochechouart were heaped with cool French girls this evening. With apparently effortlessly mussed bangs, smoky eyes, interesting pants, and unreadably complicated semaphores of movement declared as they flicked cigarette from mouth to ashtray and back again, they were a myriad choir of chic that sung as one of the compellingly complicated allure of French womanhood.
Although you get off it smelling of urine and fried chicken, the advantage of taking the metro instead of relying on Uber or a car (ha!) is that you pick up impressions like this. And tonight’s sparked this insight: Alexa Chung is the coolest French girl France never had. The exception is Jane Birkin, but of course she ended up pretty French anyway.
Chung presented the second episode of her eponymous see-now-buy-now collection—this one has in fact already been on sale for two weeks—in a hall in the neighborhood. Called Prom Gone Wrong, it was an ode to imaginary cool American girls, stood up heartrendingly on the biggest soir of their early lives. There was a Molly Ringwald; a jock mean girl; a geek art student destined for great things despite her bad hair; and a pair of identical twins, half Carrie, half The Shining, who were in that awesome Undercover show yesterday. The doors opened late (grrr), and when they did, the crowd piled in hard and thirsty. There were balloons on the floor and a band singing “Wicked Game” awesomely. Outside was a bouncy castle that promised later tumult. That assembled were so keen on the bar—reasonably so—that they barely registered the slow-dancing, sad-looking models arranged around it. It seems almost redundant to describe in great detail clothes that are already on sale—just find the website and buy them, or don’t, okay?—but the vibe mustered around these pieces was fun. Chung was her usual self-outrageously-eyed and -cheekboned, shiftingly charming, self-deprecatatingly, adult-escent sort-of-waif non-naïf and said she planned her next episode of these self-branded mise-en-scènes to be held in Tokyo, date TBA. While writing this, I’m listening to the best prom soundtrack of them all, from Grosse Pointe Blank, so thanks for that, AC.
