Paris Fashion Week has its droves of international glitterati who touch down in the city to attend shows—and these attendees are no doubt well-dressed as they shuffle from car to front row with every hair in place and every cuticle cut. But beyond the step-and-repeat, there is a tenderness in the style of the everyday Parisian woman. Their style is distinct from the “French girl” stereotype and filled with personal details: like a pair of tried-and-true lace-up flats on an older woman, or a mother carrying a baby in a wax print wrap. During this fashion week, photographer and Paris resident Clémence Polès took to the streets to capture the city’s stylish denizens, far away from the shows.
Polès has developed her eye as the founder of the online publication Passerby, in which she spots women—sometimes random people on the street—and asks to photograph and profile them. Her profiles have included an ER nurse with an epic bag collection, as well as Polès’s Serbian gym teacher with Chanel boxing gloves. “I typically turn my gaze to women who have a certain attitude, one that is a little defiant or bold,” says Polès. “There’s this personal indulgence in how they wear their clothes, from the colors, to the patterns, and how each piece they wear relates to one another or says something quite intimate about them.”
Polès is drawn to her subjects when they are doing their everyday tasks but with a singular flair. With that in mind, she shot her random subjects in three different Arrondissements: The residential 12th which Polès says “has the best market: Marché d’Aligre that is historic but not overly touristy”; the 3rd, which is the hip Marais (also known as the “Jewish Quarter”) that is filled with clothing shops and plenty of traffic; and finally, the 11th, which Polès considers a mix of “newer and old school Paris”.
What catches Polès’s eye is not the bag someone is carrying, necessarily, but how they wear the bag. Maybe it is the way an older woman has a lizard brooch tacked to her trench’s lapel, and wears red lipliner…sans any lipstick!
Elsewhere, a Beatrice Dalle lookalike in hoop earrings wears a floral embroidered vest that looks like it was plucked from the acid-era of The Beatles. But her real charm lies in her white sneakers with filthy laces. Another woman pairs her wired Apple headphones with a searing royal blue headscarf and silver earrings that appear as if they are woven. A Hasidic Jewish woman is modestly dressed with a baby pink turban and a fuchsia floral print dress with ruffles at the shoulders. Her marble-style iPhone case is also palest pink.
