Dress Code

As someone who insisted on wearing jogging suits (and onlyones from Cotton Ginny-remember them?) until grade 8, I am fascinated by what kids wear here in Paris.

I was surprised at the number of kids who showed up in 'casual' (that means typical North American wear) clothes at school today. I quickly learned that today was 'gymnastique' and they were therefore dressing appropriately. While on the playground yesterday, I did an informal visual survey of the 33 4 and 5 year olds that were outside. Of the 14 girls, 11 of them were wearing skirts. All 11 skirt wearing girls were also wearing some kind of stylish boots that were made of leather and involved an intricate zipper type closure. Of the remaining boys, all had curdurouy pants or jeans, except the lone Canadian who was wearing red jogging pants (my kind of kid!). I swear that one of the boys had a cashmere sweater on yesterday (over top of a button up shirt), and one of the girls has had a different jacket every day I've seen her (and each jacket is the type that you might wear over a party dress-but obviously my children's fashion knowledge is a bit flawed). If this is what kids wear to school, to play in the sand in, what do they wear when they get dressed up?

And it's not just the kids at this school. All the kids that I see around-on the metro, in the bakery, in the neighbourhood-are well dressed. There are no 'casual' days. Kids don't wear sneakers (but adults don't either). Or sweatshirts. Or jogging pants (too bad). I always thought these 'fancy' clothes were very uncomfortable (please note that I included blue jeans in the uncomfortable category when I was young, hence my extended jogging suit wearing period. I still feel that way, and am in fact wearing jogging pants right now), and I obviously felt very strongly about this as I have a few (not so fond--sorry mom!) memories of smocked dresses.

I guess all this fancy dressing explains why adult Parisians are usually so well dressed. It probably explains why I often feel fairly underdressed. It also explains why I don't leave the house in my jogging pants anymore (sigh...the good old days in TO, where I fit right in on Queen Street), and why I have an entire unpacked suitcase full of 'gym' clothes (well, that's mostly because I don't go to the gym anymore. But I plan to, really!).

I obviously have a lot to learn from these kids aside from French... (yes, they correct my French!) I wonder if anyone is interested in a English-fashion exchange?