Searching for a new look for the fall? Look no further than the alleyways of Paris. This discarded French cigarette totally nails the “hasty Euro grunge with a touch of soul-searching” look that we all aspire to achieve. Dirty and bent, with just a tad of its insides spilling out, it looks up at the world from pavement and screams, “I FUCKING DARE YOU TO PICK ME UP,” but in French. Now that’s a message we can all get behind, no matter what our style budget is! Here’s how to cop the French street trash look:
Be Soggy!
You don’t want to look try-hard—that’s the least-French amount of effort, and you don’t want that. Show up looking like a strong wind rolled you into a puddle of old melted slush. Take a wash cloth, stomp it around on your front stoop, then run the cloth under the sink and dampen your whole body, making sure to properly dab your hair and clothes. Think less “wet rat” and more “wet paper tube of organic material”. You’re not sopping wet—just damp enough that no one really wants to touch you. Ah, l’cigarette!
Be So French!
Not like “Marie Antoinette wearing a beret while painting a bucolic landscape” French. Real French. Like you just left your landlord’s apartment after a wild night of sex while listening to noise rock on vinyl, and now you’re openly smoking in the metro on the way to a Bordeaux tasting in a cave under a skate park. This cigspo would never be caught dead at a McDonald’s or sitting at a bidet-less toilet. Be the kind of French that makes people stop and say, “You are bizarrely beautiful in your bleakness. Should I take you away from this sad, overcast place?”
Be Pointy But Also Kind Of Squishy!
Everyone loves an angular beauty, especially if she’s also soft and rounded, like a baby Yorkshire terrier. Try and mimic the almost avant-garde curves of this beautiful discarded cigarette—as if you, too, were cast to the ground by an elegant bookseller whose cab arrived unexpectedly early. Have clavicles for days. Crimp your hair. Quit exercising, but keep dieting. Be a sharp baby. You are French now!
Get The Stubbed-Out Look.
Slate-gray lips and sparkly black eyeshadow are the easiest way to look like someone stubbed your smoldering face out in the street. And here’s a fun trick: Dust a red lip with bone-colored pigment powder to evoke the faded, smudged lipstick stain on your inspo-cig. It’s literal, without being too beautiful. Talk about a smokeshow!
Be Impossibly Thin.
They don’t call them “cigarette pants” and “cigarette boats” and “cigarette cases” for nothing. It’s all about being thin and curveless. Allow your clothes to be the papery sheath that covers your painful joints. We’re talking literally, impossibly thin. French thin. Like no one thinks you’re a human or even an animate object at all. Like “There’s no way you have an intact skeleton with that small an outfit on” thin. Because that’s how thin this cigarette is!
With this daring style, you’re looking up at the world and saying, “I’m know I’m down here, all dirty with my face rubbed into cement, but I choose to be down here, and I’m still better than you.” Maybe some sexy young photographer will lock eyes and snap a quick shot of you, all gritty and gloomy. Because the curb is no place for twee, or preppy, or boho chic. Be rumpled and bleak and tube-shaped and soggy this fall. But most of all, be you.
