A fabulous new collection of glasses!

One thing I have made clear in previous posts is that being a dainty and stylish Frenchwoman does not mean it is necessary to have attention to detail or even consistency.  Dear old Mireille Guiliano said on her website "French women adore fashion", but immediately afterwards said "French women are stubborn individuals and don't follow mass movements".

I was recently asked to give my expert opinion on an absolutely fabulous new line of glasses that is being released today by Warby Parker.  The line is known as the Concentric Collection, the word "concentric" being applied fairly loosely, given that the shape it refers to is not entirely circular.  However, there is no doubt that the designers showed how it is possible to have both an enormous amount of attention to detail, but not fall into the trap of failing to see the forest for the trees.  All six pairs of glasses within the glasses are beautifully individual, but have that rare gift of being able to combine attention to detail with making a product that is pleasing to the eye when considered as a whole.  Below I will go into the details of what I just adore about each pair, what I think it might go well with and who I believe it will be most suited to.

EVERLY: - Whistler Grey (with Fjord Blue)

Whistler Grey is the brand new colour available in this range.  It gives a sleek futuristic look with a beautiful contrast of silver and blue against each other.  I could easily see glasses such as these appearing in a movie set several centuries in the future.  I believe glasses such as these will work best against a bright white outfit, as the whistler grey will look a bit too understated if used against bright clothing, whereas a bright white outfit will allow the glasses to shine.  I just love the contrast of the horizontal lines of the whistler grey part and the plain fjord blue pattern.  These glasses will best suit someone with a very pale skin shade, which will combine with the bright clothes and the sleek look of these glasses to give the intended look.

EVERLY: - Windswept (with Hazelnut)

I just love the look of these glasses, the light brown blending in nicely with the dark lenses.  I am not sure this term is still politically correct, but these glasses are great for constructing an ethnic look.  There are a large number of different ethnic looks that will work with these glasses, most notably the Touareg look.  I therefore intend to buy a pair of these for Bilal for him to wear with his tagelmust and burnous.  Bilal takes little interest in fashion (save for hip-hop fashion), but he does wear some absolutely beautiful indigo garmets when he desires to be in Touareg attire and these glasses will complment them perfectly.  However, it is not just Touareg attire that this will successfully complement: - these glasses will work well for both men and women with more or less any type of veil, perhaps the dark veil often worn by Gulf Arab women.  The variety of horizontal brown lines affords the glasses a nice rugged look.  The hazelnut inner ring means that there is a pleasant gradual build-up to the dark shades, rather than a sharp transition.  These glasses are also great for leisure wear and are just the sort of thing someone would opt for if seeking a casual look whilst on holiday in a warm and sunny country.

MURPHY: - Crystal (with Hazelnut)

What I love about this pair of glasses is that it allows someone to have a "geek chic" look, but without being overly conspicuous.  Me personally, I disliked the dark horn-rimmed glasses look that was sometimes seen on people such as Justin Timberlake a few years ago and I am glad that this fad has since passed.  However, the fact that the hazelnut inner rim is thin (almost as thin as a Frenchwoman's waistline, MDR) means that it exercises a powerful moderating influence that stops the overall feel of the glasses being conspicuous, overbearing and as though the wearer is trying too hard with the "geek chic" look.  The hazelnut inner ring has a subtle pattern that fits well with the shining, clean and bright crystal frame and gives these glasses just enough informality to avoid appearing too formal if necessary.  The overall chic design will make the wearer look sophisticated and intelligent, but will not convey the impression that he/she is trying too hard.  These glasses are great for work wear, particularly in professions where it is necessary to convey the appearance of being knowledgeable, but are also great for creating a "power dressing" image.  They offer the best of both worlds.

MURPHY: - Cognac Tortoise (with Vulcanite)

The first thing that came into my head when I saw this variant was the film Thelma and Louise.  When I go to Mali (my fiancé's homeland) apart from the need to avoid offence with immodest dress, it is necessary to wear dark glasses and some sort of head covering, given the sand that exists everywhere.  After all, a Frenchwoman would not like to see her hair messed up or her eye makeup sanded away by a fierce desert wind.  This is definitely the sort of thing I could see myself wearing on future trips to Mali!  As in the film Thelma and Louise, a pair of glasses such as this will go very likely with a babushka-style headscarf for women of several different age groups.  There is a famous photo of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II riding a horse alongside Ronald Reagan and wearing a bubushka-style headscarf: - glasses such as these would complete the look.  The cognac tortoise pattern is just enough to stop the glasses looking too plain, but is simultaneously understated and elegant.  These glasses are great for general leisure wear, irrespective of whether the weather is sunny or not.

BENCHLEY: - Oak Barrel (with Flint)

The Oak Barrel variant reminds me vaguely of the cat eye glasses that women in the 1960s wore, though thankfully with more moderate top corners!  This is not intended as a criticism, as I regularly insert images from fashions of the past in my blog posts.  A Frenchwoman does not disdain the past, but she just loves to pick out the choicest examples of fashion from each era and look different each day: - a Frenchwoman will use her shrewd eyes to choose timeless elegance over fads any day.  These glasses are fabulous for a 1960s retro look.Glasses such as these will work very well as part of a 1960s-esque outfit consisting of these glasses, a plain top (a polo neck jumper in particular) and a plain skirt/pair of trousers, each of the three constituent parts in a different colour, say red/yellow/green or red/yellow/blue.  If a smarter or a slightly less bold look is desired, I believe this would work well with a matching pill box hat, jacket and skirt.  I don't think Jacqueline Kennedy was short-sighted, but if she had been, I could just see a fashion icon such as her wearing a pair of glasses such as this alongside a pill box hat.  Generally, I believe this will best suit someone with a fair shade of skin, so as to bring out the bright colours.

BENCHLEY: - Crystal (with hazelnut)

This variant will be a great choice for someone with a darker shade of skin, as the bright white of the main frame will stand in contrast to the skin shade, with the hazelnut inner rim giving an edgy, sophisticated look.  This variant is very useful for upper-end leisure wear.  It will look classy against many items of clothing.  As I have often mentioned, Bilal likes to wear hip-hop clothing when he is not wearing a traditional Touareg costume and I believe this will be a great accessory for a sweatsuit.  I could just see famous rappers such as Rohff wearing this on stage.    This is not a backhanded compliment though: - anyone hoping to make big sales in the fashion will do well if they can be all things to all men (and women, MDR).  This variant is the perfect complement to others in the range that allows the already fabulous Concentric Collection to appeal to an even wider audience.

So there you have it: - my take on this fabulous collection.  Each of the designs are individual, but absolutely wonderful in their own way.  It is clear that a large amount of thought has gone into making the designs individual, so careful thought should be expended regarding what it will match with, but a small amount of forethought about which pair of glasses will match the chosen outfit will yield enormous dividends when it comes to creating a look to die for.

The folly of crash diets

Apologies to all my eager readers who have been eagerly lapping up everything I have written about how to be an impossibly perfect Frenchwoman: - I am aware that I have not written a post for a long time.  As was said in my previous post, Bilal and I are now engaged.  I have been a woman in high demand for a long time, but so far, only Bilal has been able to win my father's approval to court me.  He is a very handsome Touareg man with an extremely muscular physique and lovely curly hair: - the muscular physique is a consequence both of his tough desert upbringing and his desire to continue to work out when his family moved to Marseille.  He speaks hip-hop French, but hey, as was said at the end of "Some like it hot", "Well, nobody's perfect".

I am hoping to work on Bilal's French.  Although it is his native language alongside his local Touareg language, his accent is a mix of Mali and La Savine, with his vocabulary being hip-hop, e.g. saying "tu voit ce que je veux dire?" at the end of sentences, inverting words (verlan) etc.  Although I am somewhat bemused by his use of French, I would much rather have a big, muscular and tough man from the ghetto toughened by living through years and years of gang warfare with real muscles than an upper middle-class man who has lived a cushy lifestyle, doesn't like the great outdoors and whose only way of looking nice is to stay under a gym sunbed and occasionally work out on sweaty gym apparatus (not to a Frenchwoman's liking, as Mireille Guiliano explains).  If one wants to see some of Bilal's acquaintances without actually visiting La Savine, many of them can be seen in 1.D.3's video Marseille Paname: -

Even though Bilal has grown up surrounded by such people, he is actually a very gentle character who has always resisted the pressure to get involved in a life of crime and who has presented an extremely convincing testimony of his new birth in accordance with what the Bible describes as the signs thereof, even if he is not so good at resisting the creeping influence of the language.  Anyway, I digress.  Bilal and I are in the midst of wedding plans.  We are spending ages obsessing about what we will have for each meal.  A croquembouche will unfortunately be out the question unless we can find a gluten-free version.

Bilal would probably just have jollof rice, taguella, goat's meat and Eghajira if I left the whole thing up to him, but since most of those present will be of European origin, we want something much more sophisticated.  With the exception of Bilal, we are planning to serve some extremely dainty portions, so as to show how sophisticated we are: - they will be so dainty that even the daintiest Frenchwoman will feel no need to say, "La moitié, s'il vous plaît".  Some people will be shocked (e.g. my English relatives on my mother's side), but I will respond that they are entirely normal portions for me.

Already, some people are asking me if I am worried about how I will fit into my dress.  I respond by telling them about how I already have an absolutely perfect figure.  I am aware of an unpleasant story about a crash diet called the LighterLife diet: - a British woman followed this diet on account of a desire to look good on her wedding day and died.  I am not inclined to make extremely inappropriate, insensitive and tasteless jokes about the deceased woman, but the article I have linked to really does indicate how French women really do know best when it comes to diets (or the lack thereof).  As Mireille Guiliano explained, French women never diet: - they simply make permanent changes to their lifestyle to shed the weight, whether this means walking further each day, buying a flat further from the ground floor, cutting out sweet foods, saying "la moitié, s'il vous plaît" more often etc.  Granted, Mireille Guiliano does not have any children as far as I know, but Bilal and I want a large family and I hope in creating our large family, I will demonstrate to the world how a Frenchwoman maintains her dainty figure even during and after pregnancy.

Samantha Clowe, the lady who unfortunately lost her life to a crash diet, did not understand the rule of the harvest.  The rule of the harvest says that if you wait till two weeks before the harvest to plant your seeds, spray them with hydroponic solution, cover them with bright lamps etc, you will not reap a harvest.  There are too many people who simply do not understand the value of setting good habits early on so that they can be kept with little effort.  Non-French women think they can buy the skimpiest bridal dress and then do a crash diet to fit inside it.  If such women had read the words of Proverbs 24:27 ("Prepare thy work without, and make it fit for thyself in the field; and afterwards build thine house"), they would realise that their order of working was wrong.  Occasionally, some Anglo-Saxon women manage to fit into skimpy wedding dresses (the photo below is of Patricia Nixon-Cox), but this is the exception rather than the norm.

I have no doubt that I will look absolutely divine (in the non-religious sense of the word) in my wedding dress.  Bilal is not exactly a perfect gentleman, as he uses the term "bien faite" to refer to my physical appearance, but I know he means well.  He has done very well to restrain his desires for me all this time.  I have no doubt that he will look similarly ravishing in a morning suit.  He refuses to wear suits at work and insists upon wearing a tagelmust and his colleagues have gotten used to this.  Don't get me wrong, he looks gorgeous in that, even though one cannot see much of his face, but I am hopeful that our wedding will persuade him to wear a suit.  Anyway, back to the subject of the baffling situation of Anglo-Saxon women eating like there is no tomorrow, somehow or other finding a husband-to-be (it's beyond me how) and then crash dieting to fit into their wedding dress.  Why won't they just adopt the la-moitié-s'il-vous-plaît diet that Frnech women use?

As a believing woman, I think unnecessarily long engagements are not a good idea on account of the temptation during the engagement, but maybe some Anglo-Saxon women would do well to spend a few months getting their eating habits sorted out before they try sorting out their wedding dresses.

I'm engaged

Today, Bilal made a proposal of marriage!  This is something I have been eagerly awaiting for several months and I can now announce that it has finally happened!  I accepted without hesitation.  Bilal and I are very different people, but I appreciate his exotic nature, with him being a mix of Touareg and hip-hop influences.  This is evident in his language usage and clothing.  He is definitely my tall, dark (and heavily-built) stranger.

Bilal has moved into my parents' home (readers will note that I live in my own flat a short distance from the Vieux Port).  The reason for this is to adapt him to French culture a little bit more, as I have no willingness to live in La Savine, even if a top-floor flat would offer fantastic views of Marseille and the Mediterranean Sea.  Such a rough gangsta area is not appealing to a sophisticated haute couture Frenchwoman such as myself.  I would get tired of people greeting me by saying "Wesh-wesh toubab?" ("Wagwan honky?")  For some reason, Bilal never looks entirely at ease when in some more typically French areas in a way that he did in Mali (I cannot vouch for what he is like in La Savine, having never been there) and often appears homesick.

In the longer term, we are wondering about what sort of arrangements will be most agreeable to us.  One option we are considering is purchasing a livestock farm that would enable Bilal to feel at home.  Although the Common Agricultural Policy allows French farmers to get away with many backward and inefficient agricultural practices (hey, I suppose some compromises are necessary to produce the pure and natural products that a Frenchwoman desires), they are still a world apart from Touareg practices.  Another possibility is for us to construct a mountain home in the mountains to the north and east of Marseille to allow him to life a hill farmer lifestyle when he is not at work.  If anyone has any suggestions, please e-mail me at mariannegaboriault@gmail.com : - we are looking for countryside that is as rugged as Bilal is, MDR!

Even if we struggle to find somewhere that causes Bilal to feel completely at home, Bilal has told me he is willing to endure feelings of homesickness for the rest of his life in order to be with me, adding that I am "une femeu bien faite" (French for "a well fit bird") even by French standards: - obviously, when he is living with my parents, they will attempt to smooth some of his rough edges.  Bilal was never a macho man, but he has spent so much time around people who speak in this manner that he uses such words as if they were normal words.  He managed to restrain himself for job and university interviews, but found it too tiring to keep up a pretence beyond that.  This is partly why he tends to gravitate towards tasks that involve doing things in the background at work: - he can prove himself by the quality of his outputs and is unlikely to be obstructed by his hip-hop use of language.  At university, he would just turn up for lectures, practical assessments etc and just go home again afterwards to do his study: - he did very well academically and he was very diligent with his studies, but he never had any interest in being involved in the extracurricular life of his university, as he never really felt at home with the white middle-class liberal atheistic students the way he does in da 'hood or at church.  He feels at home at church because he knows that in this world, we are to regard ourselves as merely sojourners and if a church is a sound church, it is the closest experience a believer will have to the world to come.  Obviously, the wedding will take place in our own church (not the one shown below).

Obviously, given my obsession with food and Bilal's coeliac disease, we will need to expend a lot of thought about what food will be served at the wedding.  It will not be nice for me to have to share a marital bed with Bilal if the food served at the wedding has caused him bowel problems, MDR.  Unless a gluten-free croquembouche is available, we may unfortunately have to have an Anglo-Saxon style wedding cake.  Maybe we could have something along the lines of Mireille Guiliano's flourless chocolate cake?  Bilal is awfully fond of this recipe, but given that it is a recipe Mireille Guiliano approves of, presumably I shouldn't worry, MDR.

I think Bilal will look absolutely gorgeous in a morning suit, but he doesn't like suits and as far as I'm aware, the only time he has ever worn one in his life was for his job interview with the "Trom de Marseille" (as he and his homies call it in Verlan, MDR).  He is very fond of his Touareg attire and some of this looks gorgeous upon him though, especially the bright indigo garments.  Because he is such a handsome man, being around him requires a greater amount of self-restraint and I am pleased that with our engagement, the amount of time I will have tocontinue to exercise this self-restraint is getting shorter.

I will be looking for the most beautiful bridal dress I can find.  Apart from the fact that I am the bee's knees and worthy of the best, it would not do for a fashion magazine editor to turn up for her own wedding in an unfashionable bridal gown.  This will be my biggest worry when it comes to wedding preparations (apart from possible legal hiccups obstructing the legal validity, e.g. the registrar being sick on the day of the wedding).  However, as I have always been dainty in my eating, I will certainly not have to worry about how my figure will look in the dress as lesser women do!  All I can say is roll on the wedding day!