A modo de radiografía, la serie de películas a continuación diseccionan visiones de una romántica –pero disímil- idea de mujer. Desarrolladas por directores que, sin relación aparente, nos presentan en sus filmes figuras femeninas peculiares, fuertes, dolidas, obsesivas, enamoradas, con ilusión, con pérdida, decididas, revueltas… y en todo, muy familiares con la maraña que personaliza ser mujer. 

Cada una de las películas que seleccioné, interpreta –a mi parecer- aspectos humanos e irremediablemente femeninos, pero de una manera alejada a los lugares comunes del cine masificado. Sus significaciones trascienden los sentimentalismos y sirven como espejos metafóricos de las relaciones y el ser femenil. El cine francés, además, tiene por usual personajes femeninos complejos, independientes, rebeldes  y erráticos, por lo que además en suma resumen ideales siempre cambiantes y subjetivos, aunque generalizados en aquella ideal del je ne sais quois de la mujer francesa –casi siempre parisienne-, ídolo universal y modelo de libertaria de feminidad.

Vogue lo denomina como el “Nuevo Drama”,  pero a mí me gusta más verlo como la nueva simplicidad dramática: looks que roban un dramatismo que pareciese solo pertenecer a los shows de alta costura, mezclando osadamente piezas casi teatrales, con volúmenes desafiantes y cortes arrebatados, con prendas simples y exageradamente comunes, que de otra manera podrían pasar incluso por aburridas. 

Como una herencia desviada del #normcore, este estilo dramático y simultáneamente simplista, encuentra su sentido en una actitud desenfadada, sin pretensiones, pero así mismo, con un valiente sentido del estilo. Atrás quedó la competencia de bloggers y autodenominadas fashionistas por quién fuese la más extravagante o cuál pudiera abarrotarse con más diseñadores a la vez. Hoy la moda tiene más que ver con una comodidad dignificada a través de piezas osadas. Blusas con mangas bombachas, colores ácidos y escotes por la espalda amarrados con cintas de tela, junto con los cómodos y básicos denim shorts, y Adidas clásicos; ¿el look perfecto para afrontar el calor desvestidor del verano?

I've always had a deep fascination with film. Though it wasn't until I was 14 I met Ivan, a friend who taught me what it really was to be a cinephile (or at least a pretend one). Our friendship entailed talking about life while comparing our every experience to old movies. It felt kind of like Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, every conversation was tainted by the silver screen; we shot very experimental short films, we told our stories through the lens, we felt freed by cinema. He would stay over at my place and we would watch film after film after film until dawn broke. He taught me about directors, actors, photography, composers, screen-writing...

Before him, I there were my cousins. It was a more naïve approach, I learned how to have fun through cinema, and I started recognizing the world around me with every movie we saw. We spent long summers at my grandparent’s house, where we would rent two movies a day –a comedy and a horror flick – and when it was just us girls, we would get the cheesiest most romantic comedies and dramas that could leave us in tears or craving for love. We woke late, spent the day at the beach, and had the grandiose lunches my grandma made; afterwards we took long naps on the hammocks, being cradled by the sounds of the ocean. At night we’d go to the nearest Block Buster and spend at least an hour trying to choose the right movies for that night, and off course, the right snacks to go with them.

Movies were as well a heavy fashion reference for me. I can’t forget seeing Belle for the first time in that golden gown swinging and dancing in Beast’s Gothic Castle. Or that rainy night I stayed home and I first saw Margot Tenenbaum’s blue tennis dress and fur coat iconic combo. The French New Wave brought a new era of fashion to my life, in these films nothing felt gratuitous, but rather necessary, no character could exist without their impossibly French look. It not only left a mark in me, it shaped the collective imagination of generations to come. So, with this in mind, movie characters became my go-to inspiration for basic startorial decisions.  Here is a short(-ish) list of some of my favorite on screen style muses.

As the Spring Couture season is in bloom, legendary French fashion houses Chanel et Dior once again welcome us into their distinctive world of high-end aesthetic and distinctive idiosyncrasy. As they each have completely opposite yet complimentary visions, both present us with an ineffable freshness and a lightness in their spirit that can make us swoon dreaming of fashion.

Lagerfeld and Simons took us far into a foreign future.

Maison Margiela marked the beginning of a new era bringing back from the dead the poetic flamboyance of a man who beyond being a true icon and iconoclast is a fashion artist. Galliano managed to merge his visual sexual innuendos and baroque opulence with Margiela’s beauty of the grotesque sensibilities and deconstructed aesthetic.  This was a truly intricate collection, filled with (Galliano’s?) life metaphors and art references from the outset and throughout. Whether it was the Basquiat-esque red and white masks set up also as Mexican death shrines, the Louise Bourgoise style unfinished and shredded fabrics, and the Giuseppe Arcimboldo-like lacquered sea shell faces that appeared in those short coats.

As an anti-trend, a post-modern appropriation injected onto life and style, or even as a Deleuzian inspired thought, Normcore is a phenomenon that I don’t think anyone is going to stop. From the mom jeans, to the dad shirt, the white Nike socks your uncle gave you for Christmas, and your old grandma's glasses, this thing is getting a hold of the fashion world. After Karl Lagerfeld debuted Chanel’s Spring/Summer’14 collection in the über chic and extraordinarily ordinary supermarket he transformed Le Grand Palais into, the trend was set. Around came Moschino with its mythic Mc Donald’s cartoonish collection, and from there, every runway show to come has been  tainted by a new sense of normalcy, a strange desire to get away from the overdosed styles and oversaturated fashions seen on the streets outside the shows. Personally, I’m all about finding our own individuality, and even being aspirational through fashion, but as trends forecasting agency K-hole says in the ‘Youth Mode:A Report of Freedom’ Normcore manifesto, we are coming from the era of mass indie, meaning the rule is to be different. This works as a double negative; when everyone in the crowd is “unique”, maybe it means we are all the same, everyone in this club is in the VIP section.

III.

On June 21st we arrived to the city after a few days visiting the estate of Loire and all of its castles. Summer had officially begun, and La Fête de la Musique was happening, so I was set on the idea of experiencing that night as a true Parisian would.  I got online and did a little research on where to go. Everyone on our group was in the mood for Latin music, I guess their nostalgia was kicking, but not mine. After baring the disappointment of founding out that the free Lana del Rey concert was over, Natalia and I decided to go to club down in Bastille that would be open until 6am, around the time the metro would function again. We got set, and fleeted the hotel. I was wearing a black and white plaid midi-length dress with a cut-out back, a dark pine-green oversized blazer, red lips and my hair down, which gave its final touch to the outfit. I was overdressed as usual, but my hair was messy enough to balance my style. We went off to the metro station, which was pulsating with energy. The city was bustling with music, everyone seemed to be in a lighter mood, and anything felt possible as if the night was reassuring us that no matter what, it was going to be the best night of our trip. And it was, though I can’t deny we encountered our share of odd characters.

I.

After packing my bags for a triumphant fourth time, I left my home on a rush with a bag which was still full with jackets and cold weather clothes that my heart was clinging to while my common sense knew I wouldn’t be wearing for the next month.After 3 movies, 2.5 meals, 4 book chapters, 1 thick fashion magazine and almost 3 music albums later, we arrived at the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris. A black van was waiting for us and took us to the Hotel in the 8th district. The unexpected heat made me lose the wool leopard print coat I’d been wearing for the past 10 hours (at least!), and left me bare in a short black Adele-like dress I thought would likely match the occasion. The whole ride seemed like I was waking up in a dream, little by little my mind starting putting back together the pieces of the first time I’d been to Paris, back in 2007. Being there never stopped feeling like a fantasy, again, like the most vivid dream. The days started passing, but the novelty never wore off. As I unpacked my bags, I could already anticipate how Paris was going to change me, how everything I’d been used to, how I experienced my life before now was beginning to feel old and foreign now that I actually had the chance to go ahead and try to mime the French je ne sais quoi I felt I had inside me all along (kind of). It was like that scene on An Education, where Carrie Mulligan’s character, Jenny, starts going on and on about how when she goes to college she is going to become this interesting and renewed woman, keeping her words to a minimum, her cool cigarette bearing to a maximum, staring at the nothingness with her deep thoughts and an imaginary French pop song in the background setting her pace. That’s how I felt, like this dreamed like was beginning to unravel for me.