When it comes to and make-up, the term ‘French girl’ has been used a lot over the past 12 months. Even in the past few weeks countless ‘get the French-girl look’ articles have popped up on my newsfeed. But with each one referring to something slightly different – some to messy ‘just-woke-up-like-this’ hair, others to bobs or Françoise Hardy-style fringes, some to natural, less-is-more make-up, others to a red lip and cat-eye flicks – it’s impossible to grasp what exactly the term is referring to.
To complicate matters further, there seems to be some kind of contradiction at its core: an effortlessness that Clare Varga, head of beauty at WGSN, describes as “belying the fact that French girls do invest a lot of time, effort and money into their beauty”. As approaches, we wanted to uncover what the French-girl aesthetic actually is, and do French women really identify with it? Is it just another elusive, unquantifiable beauty ideal or is it a byword for inner confidence? We asked five French women – each celebrated for their unique approach to style – about what the term means to them. “Mostly natural and effortless, achieved with effort.
” “Hard to choose one. Let’s say the writer Simone de Beauvoir because beauty is 360 degrees.” “It is seen as a form of nonchalance, and that freedom of being is probably what people find attractive.
” “Natural and simple. I take good care of my skin because I think of it as 75 per cent of my make-up. I.