We’re retired and visiting France later this year and we’re wondering what’s the style of clothing there today. We’d like to fit in and not look like a tourist.
Thanks,
Tom
Where we have a house, mostly jeans and tees. French people look like most other Europeans to me as far as daytime attire goes. It trousers or a dress on for dinner if going out, just like you might elsewhere.
Tourists round here look cleaner and brighter than the rest of us. Much newer clothes! But it’s the daypacks/backpacks that often give it away.
But even after all this time we can’t pass for French. Something about the body type, height and preferred haircut despite wearing 100% French clothes,
When we go other places we play a spot the English /German/Dutch game and are very rarely wrong.
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Yes the backpack (or fanny pack) is a bit of a giveaway!
Also (for men) don’t wear shorts and sandals unless the temperature is over 40C.
Béatrice our Fashion Correspondent writes: For Paris the trick is to always wear sunglasses even in December when it’s raining, stick to neutral colours (a maximum of three of which two should usually be black and white), and cultivate an air of nonchalant superiority. 
In rural France however, for gentlemen a checked shirt (the older the better), a flat cap, a few days growth of beard and a large tractor are perennially popular fashion accessories.
(A gilet jaune may be added for formal occasions, such as barricading an autoroute.)
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No - don’t wear shorts unless your legs are sun-tanned
ditto for loafers without socks.
We live in a popular tourist area and pale white legs are a tourist giveaway.
Just like Jean-Pierre here…
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Don’t wear shorts unless you are a child or by the sea. Don’t wear red trousers. Don’t wear anything with too much stuff on it. Don’t wear a baseball cap. Don’t wear trainers unless you are actually doing a sport. In fact don’t wear a tracksuit or lycra or that sort of clothing if you aren’t in fact doing a sport. Don’t wear a wife-beater.
Of course this is light-hearted and rules are made to be broken.
Just wear some clothes.
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V amusing, that’s a uniform, that young woman with different hair could be any of my daughters or their pals, and the pic was taken 10 minutes max on foot from their HQ. Assuming I’m right and that’s the église St Roch in the 1er obv.
I’m a bit out in the sticks, so I wear shorts, blue tee-shirt, slightly soiled white bucket hat, plus broken-in size 12 steel toe-capped boots pretty much all the time from say May to October.
As the weather cools I add extra layers - this usually means a polo shirt, jumper, and/or a blue boiler suit. Autumn calls for my gardening jacket and fleece beanie.
The boiler suit gives good freedom of movement, and is great for dusk mossie protection too. Pretty much essential wear when gardening, and I find taping up the ankles with some narrow masking tape or cycling clips helps prevent biting insects from clambering inside.
My jumpers have far too many holes in them for me to pass off to the French as being French, but I have been known to fool Tourists, and am particularly pleased with my recently honed haussement d’épaules français.
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Back in Bretagne, spotting a tourist was very easy. They mandatorily HAD to wear shorts and teeshirts whilst the rest of us inhabitants were usually wrapped up in waterproofs and wellies! Never failed to amuse us, Parisiennes being the worst offenders and also sitting on the beach in gales or rain too like it was obligatory to expose their bodies to the elements.
Back in Bordeaux you usually heard American tourists before you saw them.
The Brits were quieter but just as easy to spot - they were the ones looking in the wrong direction when crossing the street and almost getting run over.
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Equally, being from Yorkshire, I find it amusing when I think it is perfectly fine and warm and the Bretons are still wrapped up in heavy coats and winter woolies.
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French holidaymakers down here are readily identifiable by their headgear - brand new white straw trilbies for the ladies and panama hats for the gents.
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Thank goodness I am still in fashion 
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It’s not my photo so I can’t tell you where it was taken, but I felt it was a representative image!
ETA: I think you win the internet today @vero - Google Street View agrees with you - Intersection of Rue Saint-Honoré and Rue Saint-Roch
(also note the getups of the two tourists and one local in the foreground!)
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I think Architects have a dispensation in their charter that demands red trousers.
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RIBA Red?
Or wear anything red with the words MAGA…
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Back in the 70’s we’d sometimes have a quick winter break in Tenerife and would be wandering around in shorts and t-shirts. I remember being amazed at the people who were wrapped up in fur coats et al…
and nowadays we are the ones wrapped up while holidaymakers enjoy what (to them) is warm/hot weather…
French pals from Brittany, with holiday homes in the village… do sometimes wander around in long-shorts when we are still wrapped up… but they tell me they come from hardy stock (Vikings??) and don’t notice the chill… 
I think their copious intake of eau de vie might have something to do with that 
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Could not agree more: unless you are playing baseball, please, especially grown men, don’t wear these things. 
…in all seriousness, depends on where in France?..in Montpellier, because it’s a University City, it’s all pretty shabby chic (like say Bordeaux and other places I’m sure.
…it’s difficult kit to stick out as a tourist so just enjoy yourself…
(Still, no baseball caps …)
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