Love Style Life Read online

  This is a work of nonfiction.

  Some names and identifying details have been changed.

  A Spiegel & Grau Trade Paperback Original

  Copyright © 2015 by Garance Doré

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  SPIEGEL & GRAU and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  All photographs and illustrations copyright © 2015 by Garance Doré unless otherwise specified.

  Photographs on this page (photos 2, 3, 4, 6, 7), this page, this page copyright © Scott Schuman Photographs in image on this page are Untitled (I*****a) and Untitled (J**e) copyright © 2013 Max Snow Photographs on this page and this page copyright © Taea Thale Photographs on this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page copyright © Erik Melvin

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Doré, Garance.

  Love style life / Garance Doré.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-8129-9637-1

  eBook ISBN 978-0-8129-9638-8

  1. Fashion. 2. Fashion—France—Paris. 3. Fashion—New York (State)—New York. 4. Lifestyles. 5. Doré, Garance. 6. Doré, Garance—Philosophy. 7. Image consultants—Biography. 8. Fashion designers—Interviews. I. Title.

  TT507.D59 2015

  746.9’2—dc23 2015008139

  eBook ISBN 9780812996388

  www.spiegelandgrau.com

  eBook design adapted from printed book design by Elina Asanti / NR2154

  v4.1

  a

  To Tahmanent, my grandma.

  Mina, you are forever in my heart, and I miss you every day.

  And to all your beautiful sons and daughters,

  who fill the world with a special kind of love, warmth, and humor

  that knows no boundaries or religions.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  INTRODUCTION

  Story of My Style

  LESSON LEARNED

  The Scarf

  How to Find Your Style

  LESSON LEARNED

  The Heels

  The French Woman Says No

  LESSON LEARNED

  The Clutch

  Mix High and Low

  It’s Okay to Break the Rules

  The Tux

  ON STYLE

  Emmanuelle Alt

  PARIS VS. NEW YORK

  Life of the Party

  The 10 Steps

  At the Shows

  24 Hours in the Life of Garance Doré Freelancer, Entrepreneur, Boss

  ON CAREER

  Diane von Furstenberg

  PARIS VS. NEW YORK

  Things New Yorkers Do

  Growing Beautiful

  The Mirror

  How to Look Better in a Photo

  Long Story Short: My Hair

  Mani! Pedi! Facial!

  Story of My Life Body

  The Turn of the Screw (Turning 40)

  ON BEAUTY

  Drew Barrymore

  PARIS VS. NEW YORK

  Things Parisians Do

  Élégance de Cœur

  How to Not Fuck Up Your Hello

  The Thank-You Note: A Competitive Sport

  E-Mail Made Me a Bad Person

  Netiquette

  Elegance Is Not…

  Elegance Is…

  ON ELEGANCE

  Jenna Lyons

  PARIS VS. NEW YORK

  Perfection

  The L Word

  In the Family

  L’Amitié

  100 Love Lessons

  CONCLUSION

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  About the Author

  I’ve been sharing my thoughts on life, love, and style for almost ten years now, which makes me:

  1. A complete over-sharer.

  2. A pretty seasoned opinion-giver.

  3. Well, it should have made me super stylish.

  So why did I pick this stupid pair of shoes this morning?

  n my blog I’ve talked about matters so light (do I really need a pair of kitten heels?) that they evaporated an hour after being published, and subjects so deep (burying my grandmother in Morocco) that I still receive incredibly heartfelt letters about them to this day. I’ve written about things so embarrassing they made me want to melt into the floor, and I’ve also written of my proudest moments.

  Sharing my stories came to me pretty late in life, but the day I got the hang of it, I began to understand the incredible power of letting your guard down, even with people you barely know.

  Because when you open yourself, people will magically open up to you.

  My blog began quite practically, as a way to share my illustrations. But I soon realized that what I really wanted was to start a conversation, just to see if there were other crazies like me out there. As it turns out, there were.

  I embarked on a quest to capture the true essence of style. My journey took me from Corsica to the South of France to Paris to New York, and many places in between. And as I’ve come to learn, “style” is about so much more than the clothes we wear. It’s the way we walk, the way we smile, the sparkle in our eyes, the way we live our lives. Style is a universal language, and it has the power to connect us.

  I grew up in a tiny beach town in Ajaccio, Corsica, but my heart belongs to Paris and New York, my two adopted home cities. Two cities that are both so fascinating and inspiring, so similar and yet so different. I could devote an entire book to comparing their quirks and assets. and how I’ve tried to take the best of each for myself. Trying to hold onto my French-ness by celebrating my imperfections and savoring my daily glass of red wine, while embracing that wonderful, empowering New York swagger. Being a French woman with an incorrigible sense of irony—but also letting myself get taken by the American dream. And realizing along the way that no matter what city we’re in, we all want the same thing.

  We want love. We want to feel beautiful. We want to be good friends, good partners, good sisters, good daughters. We want to know how to never buy the wrong pair of shoes again. (Sorry to inform you, but you will keep making shoe mistakes until the day you die. So celebrate being alive right now!) We want to feel fulfilled by the work that we do, whatever that work may be.

  Most of all, we want to find our place in this world.

  And to be very stylish along the way, of course.

  I found my place in this world almost by accident—more on that later—and it took me where I’d never dared to dream. How on earth do you provoke this sort of beautiful accident?

  That’s what I want to share with you in this book. And I hope that my story inspires you to create your own series of beautiful little accidents—and to enjoy the ride, that’s what life is all about.

  I know now that fashion can really empower and make anyone feel beautiful—and that missteps are not the end of the world.

  STORY OF

  My sister Laetitia.

  I’M 4 AND MY STYLE BELONGS TO MAMAN.

  My mother, Kheira, has the most unexpected sense of style.

  I don’t know where she got it—maybe from my grandma Tahmanent, who was a Berber from the Moroccan mountains. My grandmother always dressed in bold colors and prints, bright frocks that complemented her long red henna-tinted hair. She loved dressing up, but she had to work within the strict codes that were imposed on her. Don’t show a lot of skin; play humble.

  My mother is the opposite. She’s a free, modern woman and she wants the world to know. She wears tight jeans and irons h
er hair, and every outfit is perfectly thought out. When she has money, she buys the best pieces from Alaïa, Montana, and Thierry Mugler (hello, ’80s!), and when she doesn’t, she plays around with what she already has, goes thrift shopping, recuts her clothes, and gets super creative.

  She wraps my head in leopard-print scarves and mismatches her stripes with my polka dots. I have to wear special shoes to reeducate my feet and save them from being flat. Instead of hiding the shoes, she puts me in light dresses to balance the heaviness with softness.

  And just like that, I’m the most stylish kid in town.

  But I really don’t care, because before long…

  My mother, Kheira, had a very unique sense of style.

  My grandma, Marie, on my father’s side was Italian and extremely chic.

  My Grandma Marie and my dad, Louis.

  Mom and me. I wish she had kept that sweater.

  My grandma, Tahmanent, in traditional Berber dress.

  I AM 8 YEARS OLD AND IN LOVE WITH PAPA.

  I’m a daddy’s girl. I love him like there is no tomorrow, and even if it will cost me a lot of money in therapy later on, for the moment all I want is the privilege of spending as much time with him as possible. So I become interested in everything he is into: cars, bikes, kitchen equipment (my dad is a chef).

  He’s a handsome Corsican Italian man with a very precise sense of style. We talk; he tells me about his tastes. I totally get it!

  I throw all my dresses away. Dresses are for little girls, anyway.

  And, I’m not a girly girl. I’m a big fan of George, the tomboy heroine from The Famous Five, a series of kids’ books I’m addicted to. George is that daring, andro-gynous, cool- before-cool-even-existed heroine. She’s smarter than all the boys and I totally identify with her—so I ask my mom to cut my hair exactly like hers.

  My mom isn’t afraid of my creativity (yet). She goes ahead and cuts.

  I’m the only girl at school with short hair.

  The perfectly braided girls in my class look at me with a raised brow and a pinched mouth. I learn what it means to be different. I don’t hate it.

  That’s me. At 8 I asked my mom to cut off all my hair. I wanted to be a boy!

  My father when he was a kid.

  My father in his twenties. He is still biking today!

  I AM 13 AND I’M IN LOVE WITH MARCEL.

  Marcel is the most handsome skater in middle school, and I’m an extremely shy nerd hiding her newly acquired curves (read: boob explosion!!!) under huge sweaters. Of course, he has no idea I exist.

  I want him to notice me. I guess I already believe in the higher powers of fashion, because I tell myself that the best thing to do is:

  a. Copy his style. Skater boy. Baggy jeans. Baggy T-shirts. Chuck Taylors.

  Result: nothing. He still has no clue I exist.

  b. Refine my approach. I notice that all of Marcel’s skater friends have super-girly girlfriends.

  Of course—guys prefer real girls!!! Shift in strategy. I become super girly. I put on jewelry for the first time (from my mom’s closet), I throw away my backpack and buy a very unpractical purse (I now have to carry my school books in my arms, like in the movies, which I feel is the epitome of chic), and I wear a fitted top, which I’m totally insecure about, but I’m ready to risk it all for Marcel.

  Result: nothing. He still doesn’t know I exist.

  Conclusion: you don’t attract guys with style. This is a very freeing insight.

  Proof? The moment I figure it out, I meet my first love, a skateboarder. No, not Marcel. Marcel, to this day, still doesn’t know I exist.

  My grandma had a thing for scarves.

  I’m about 10 here and my hair is growing back.

  The Famous Five were my favorite books from my childhood. George was my idol!

  About 12, becoming a teenager.

  I AM 15 AND IN LOVE WITH REI KAWAKUBO.

  Whom I encountered through The Face, the wonderful ’90s British fashion magazine. To this day I still thank the fashion gods for the British tourists who left a copy in my dad’s restaurant.

  I get a subscription and The Face becomes my bible. I want to be part of this world and, as you know by now, for me that translates into wanting to adopt its style.

  But, my parents are not crazy about spending their money on anything that’s not directly related to my education. My wardrobe allowance is below sea level, so I go on secret missions into my mother’s closet.

  With the help of a big pair of my dad’s kitchen scissors, I turn some of her most beautiful clothes into what, in my teenage mind, resembles Comme des Garçons.

  In Ajaccio, no one understands my style. Les ignorants.

  As for my mother, she discovers my closet-plundering when she reaches for her Montana coat and finds only a single sleeve I forgot to hide in its place.

  She shouts. And then she faints. And when she wakes up she locks me out of her closet for the unforeseen future.

  I run off in tears, proclaiming that one day Rei Kawakubo will adopt me and everyone will finally be happy, since no one in our family understands me.

  In other words, I am a teenager.

  I AM 18, A STUDENT, AND IN LOVE WITH MY BEST FRIEND.

  I move to the South of France to study. I am supposed to live in a dorm, but my best friend’s apartment is so much nicer that we decide to live together. We study literature, but we’re mostly interested in experiencing life and discovering who we are.

  And by that I mean partying, of course. What’s more important when you’re eighteen?

  My friend Anne is the best thing that ever happened to me. We understand each other without talking, but we still talk 24/7.

  Our style? Agnès B. tight jeans (skinny stretchy jeans hadn’t been born yet. I know, prehistoric), Agnès B. big sweaters, Doc Martens. Always the same, always matching, every day, all the time. Our dresser? Shared. Our friends? Shared. Our favorite movies? Shared. Our personality? Wait, what did you say? Our what?

  Years later I discover that her feet were actually three sizes smaller than mine, but she never said anything about it, just because she was so happy to be able to share closets and Doc Martens. We had Doc Martens in every color of the rainbow, even the gold ones that are so difficult to find.

  Ah, friendship rocks!!!

  I AM 22 YEARS OLD AND IN LOVE WITH BJÖRK.

  Hiking shoes like Björk, miniskirt like Björk, hair in multi-buns like Björk, and a military parka because, unlike Björk, I can’t afford a coat from Hussein Chalayan.

  One day, on a trip to Washington, DC, to visit a friend who lives with a colorful bunch of punk rockers, I’m feeling very free and inspired. And so, just to see what it would be like, I go to a local salon and get my head shaved.

  It feels weird and amazing. More spectacular than beautiful, but I don’t care about looking good. I’m much deeper than that. I’m a punk intellectual!

  No, really. Shaving my head is about saying…It’s about saying, hmmmm…Well, it must be saying something. Maybe just that I feel liberated by this wonderful and faraway country where no one judges me and where I can walk around with a shaved head and a coffee in a to-go cup, the most fashionable accessory there is for a French girl like me.

  1. A shirt from Agnès B — I would spend all my money there. 2. Björk, my style idol when I was 20. 3. The Face, the magazine that opened a new world to me.

  I AM 24 AND I’M IN LOVE WITH ROCK ’N’ ROLL.

  I’m into the indie-rock scene. Instead of studying, I organize concerts with a friend, having bands we love come play in our city. We book groups like Cat Power, Blonde Redhead, and—a little more cerebral, because we’re deep—Tortoise.

  My friends and I, we’re really the cool bunch.

  Again, I’m in skinny jeans (still can’t find them back then, takes forever in vintage shops, but, hey, between two rock concerts and skipping class, I have aaall the time in the world), pointy flats (you can’t find them back then, takes foreve
r in vintage shops, but, hey, between two rock concerts and skipping class, I have aaall the time in the world), vintage fur (so easy to find in vintage shops, pfffff, annoying), I have a cigarette in one hand, a beer in the other, and a backstage pass around my neck.

  I don’t have any money—it’s not like organizing concerts will really make you any, and, anyway, I’d rather spend it on beer than on clothes. So it’s thrift shop all the way to achieve that look, which in retrospect was very Margot Tenenbaum. My closet may or may not smell like a vintage store, but I look cool and I’m having so much fun!

  After a while, I realize that I stink, that I don’t like beer, and that you can see the concert better if you’re in the audience. I throw the lifestyle away, but I keep the skinny jeans and the ballet flats.

  This turns out to be my first lesson in classic French style: When something works, stick with it.

  I AM 26 AND IN LOVE WITH ZARA.

  I’m a working girl!!! Well, I’m working but I’m still poor. After university, I get myself a job in a very stylish art-and-essay cinema, helping with press and curation. I watch movies all day; it’s romantic; I’m learning so much. But I have to look good to do my job, and I really can’t afford it.