“What’s it like to be a model in Paris for fashion week?”
A simple question on paper. But plating up an answer – replete with all the elements, the mise en place, the highs, lows, and everything in between – feels like a Michelin-level effort best left to the experts. Someone call Rémy from Ratatouille; I’m in over my head.
Being in Paris deserves its own course; Paris during fashion week, another. Being a model? Well, brace your palate – your gullets – that’s a whole damn degustation.
Not too long ago, Charlotte, Tiama and I were three ANZ girls galivanting around the city of love and chic – just three of the many models afoot during Paris Fashion Week (PFW). These weeks move so fast it's hard to take pause. Blink and you might miss it – or, indeed, end up immortalised in a street-style photo mid-blink. Luckily, Olivia Repaci captured us on film (eyes open), so you don’t have to miss a thing.
Now that we’re outside the fashion-month bubble, with time to reflect and rest our blistered feet, I asked Charlotte (Char), resident NZ-er, and Tiama (T), a fellow Sydneysider, some questions about their experience as I reminisce on my own.
I love Paris. I love its energy, its romance and even its grime. There’s a phenomenon they call Paris syndrome, suffered by tourists who don’t expect the twinkly-towered Paris of dreams to have any grime (or rats) at all.
I asked the girls what shaped their perceptions of Paris growing up, and how the real thing stacks.
Tiama told me: “I didn’t really have any perception or care for Paris until work actually took me there and that’s when I fell in love”. Like Charlotte, Tiama now lives in London and appreciates, as we all do, the walk-and-cyclability of Paris “you can ride your bike everywhere in around 20 minutes”, she says. This comes in handy when you have too many castings in too many arrondissements in too little time.
Growing up in the countryside, having never left Aotearoa (New Zealand), Char remembers asking her well-travelled childhood friend to “hold any souvenirs or items she had bought over there”…”so I could feel the energy of Paris”, she said.
Char: “I imagined cobbled streets, lights, the Eiffel Tower and women in chic dresses. Pretty much stacks up to the real thing.”
Tiama sums it up quite appropriately: “It’s not like London in the sense that no one will really look your way and everyone minds their own business. Paris personified is a bitchy French woman who will judge you but also make sure you get home safe.”
“Everyone is so chic.” Tiama adds. And it's true. Being in Paris always inspires me to pay more attention to style, other people's as well as my own. I want to look like the people perched up and perusing around Canal Saint Martin – chic and effortlessly cool.
The Canal is Tiama’s favourite spot in the city: “it's a perfect walk from the Marais or Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, to finish your day with an ice cream from JJ Hings or a cheeky Hugo spritz”.
The Canal is a stone’s throw from one of Chars' favourite spots in Bellville, attached to a magic moment she had there this season, sitting alfresco style at a “cafe opposite a church”.
Char: “It felt like a movie scene…families, dogs, kids and different characters passed by in front of us to the sound of the church bell and slow darkening to dusk.”
In my first season, I remember being picked up by a mototaxi after a show one night, driving (if you can call it that) to the next, weaving in and out of traffic, the city lit up and sparkling like the Tour Eiffel itself, vibrating with life. I took blurry mind pictures, tried my best to capture the surreality of the moment – appreciating and praying for my life at the same time.
I asked the girls to give me an ‘Emily in Paris’ moment they’ve had vs a less glamorous, ‘Paris syndrome’ moment (when the experience of being a model in the very romanticised city of Paris might have fallen short of expectations).
Tiama’s Emily in Paris moment: “Being at the Square du Temple park in Marais in summer after getting food from the marché des Enfants Rouges, senior citizens started gathering under the pavilion singing the ratatouille song, we were in the sun watching the baby ducks in the pond..”
Tiama’s Paris syndrome moment: “Being screamed at by an old French man…for riding on the pedestrian footpath on my lime bike at 2 am when nobody else was around”, though, she adds, “I romanticise French bitchiness a bit too much, so it's always kind of funny”.
Char’s Emily in Paris moment: “Going to the Eiffel Tower with my special people at midnight watching it sparkle from the river :)”
Char’s Paris syndrome moment: “Waiting for 3 hours in the cold with other shivering models for a casting, knowing I could have just slept in....”
Fashion week restricts models to wearing something casting-friendly most days – you always have to be prepared for a last-minute call from your agents to be on the other side of the city, like, ASAP, s’il vous plaît.
I reach for the classics: black pants or a good pair of denim and play around with accessorising; a bonnet, a scarf, a blazer or a belt (though not all at once because the French do ‘less is more’ best).
Layering is especially important in September when the colder months loom. Mornings can be blistering and grey. Leaving the apartment, you kick yourself for not wearing the jacket, taking up the lion’s share of your luggage space. Then, by midday, you find yourself wishing you’d worn nothing at all, shedding off layers like a lizard on the Seine, lugging them – sweaty and graceless – around sunny Parisian streets.
I asked the girls what their typical routine during PFW looks like. For Tiama, it's the same as any other week, “except with more protein bars in my bag to fuel my running around”. For Char, it's packing the all-important tote bag to get her through the day, loaded with “heels, comp cards, journal, headphones and sunglasses”. Then, she says: “Get a coffee and orange juice from a quaint boulangerie for the walk to castings or a show. After work, I have some soup, baguette and cheese and have a bigggg nap. Then get ready to go be lit.”
Every season, there’s usually one thing I wear on repeat. Comfortable shoes are a must, and my feet are almost always clad with the trusty Miista loafers I’ve had for a few years and step-count-heavy FW seasons. They’ve neither failed nor blistered me as yet.
Char’s holy-grail FW staple this season was her “tailcoat jacket – impractical, but can put it over everything”. For Tiama, it was her vintage Prada bag: “She fits comp cards, hydroflask, portable charger, heels, sweater... truly a mini tardis”.
There are so many great vintage and consignment stores in Paris, especially during FW, when timely pop-up stores multiply around Le Marais, enticing you with overpriced vintage designer goods that make you want to cry and vomit simultaneously.
Do not – I repeat – do not try anything on unless you are prepared to pay big euros (which, lest I remind you, means doubly bigger NZD/AUD).
Tiama’s favourite vintage store in Paris is Anemonia. Char's is Le Puces de Paris Saint-Ouen – a “big flea market in the outskirts of Paris”. It’s “the best”, she tells me. Her favourite purchase? “I got a pair of cheetah print heels and a teal button-up shirt (my current favourite colour)”. Thanks for the reco Charlotte, duly noted.
I have a few charity shop gems, a little further from the expensive fray I can always rely on to mend my broke(n) heart. A très chic vintage Hermès top, black with quarter-length sleeves, nabbed for 25 euros in an Oxfam in the 11th Arr., is my most prized purchase this season.
I asked both Tiama and Char if being in Paris this FW season inspired any shifts in their style – and, if so, whether they could imagine taking it home with them, flaunting it around ANZ?
Char: “I have always loved a chic coat or a fur, but felt it was a bit much in NZ. Now I have been living in Europe I can't turn back - wearing the tailored trenches, button-ups and heels I fell in love with in Paris, in NZ, would turn a few heads, but I think it would be funny. Stay dapper.”
Tiama: “If anything, this Paris fashion week has inspired me to dress more colourfully and move away from the expected all black model off duty outfit, yes yes yes”.
Finally, two quick-fire but all-important questions:
A song you had on repeat this PFW season?
Tiama: 'Better Views', Yellow House.
Char: 'Feel It', Kate Bush.
Mine, you ask? The Cure and The Cause, Fish Go Deep, of course.
A standout meal or any one mind-blowing pastry you’ve eaten whilst in Paris?
Tiama: The steak frites baguette place in the Marais.
Char: I am a simple girl. French onion soup or a baguette with butter does it for me.
I am not so simple. For me, it's the almond chocolate croissant from a boulangerie unknown, scoffed down at a time of dire need, that will live forever in my dreams.
Until next time Paris - chef's kisses, bisous bisous.
Features Writer: Grace Cameron Photos: Olivia Repaci Fashion: Lotte Wierenga Beauty: Kiana Mei
Charlotte is represented by Priscillas, Super & Select
Grace is represented by Priscillas & Ford
Tiama is represented by Kult & Silent
