How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are

Basic oversized sunglasses. Every day, even when it’s raining, because you always have a reason to wear them: too bright out, a hangover, tears running down your face, a desire to be mysterious

Basic oversized sunglasses. Every day, even when it’s raining, because you always have a reason to wear them: too bright out, a hangover, tears running down your face, a desire to be mysterious

Jeans, anytime, anywhere, and any way. Take a Parisienne’s jeans out of her closet and she feels stark naked

Don’t use abbreviations when texting. (And emoticons should be only for your girlfriends

Find “your” perfume before you turn thirty. Wear it for the next thirty years

there’s only one rule the Parisienne follows: may the best driver win.

Her mother had been so beautiful (family photos attest to her former long-limbed elegance). And yet, a mere decade of inactivity was all it took to ruin this gift that Mother Nature had so graciously bestowed upon her.

she treats each kiss like a once-in-a-lifetime performance. She wants to be unforgettable

Your skin retains the memory of every party you ever went to, under your eyes and at the corners of your lips.

The Stranger, Albert Camus
The Elementary Particles, Michel Houellebecq
Belle du Seigneur, Albert Cohen
Bonjour Tristesse, Françoise Sagan
Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
Foam of the Daze, Boris Vian
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
The Flowers of Evil, Charles Baudelaire
Journey to the End of the Night, Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Swann’s Way, Marcel Proust