What went wrong? September 21, 2009 @ 1:47 pm
Ahh, the French. Walk down any street in any town big enough to have its own baker and you’ll see French people looking stylish, no matter what they’re wearing. I often look down at my own baggy jeans, hooded jumper, or long a-line skirt and wonder where I went wrong. I want to look elegant and stylish, but I just look out of place with these uber-stylish French all around me. Even now, with my wardrobe full of clothes bought here in France, I just can’t match things up the way the French do. I’m in awe. I’m envious. I dream of the day when elegance hits me on the head like a Fairy Godmother’s wand.
Sometimes, however, there are gaping holes in their style, as shown in these two catalogue photos. Yes, those clothes are lovely, aren’t they. Those kids look really cute in such well-cut fabric in such pretty colours. But what on earth is going on with their lips? Do they all have lipstick on? Okay, I know that photo shoots usually require models to wear more makeup than usual so that they don’t look washed out in the photos, but these kids look like they’ve just eaten either fluorescent ink or far too many raspberries. There’s natural, and then there’s this. Fluoro Girl here on the left seems to have licked of the lipstick from one side of her top lip!
And what’s with the boy on the right? Apart from the red lips, has he suffered sunburn because his mate on the left nicked his hat? Maybe the kids did look natural in the photo shoot, and then the graphic designer who put the images into the catalogue decided their lips and cheeks weren’t colourful enough. Perhaps there’s some very angry photographer out there who has seen the end product in the catalog and is now banging his or her fists on a table screaming “Ah la vache! Non, non, non!” — their reputation in France now in ruins.
Either way, I feel just a little bit smug that sometimes the French do get it wrong. Less smug, of course, when I admit that I’m typing this with a bright green bikini top straps alongside my peach-coloured halterneck top straps, unsuccessfully matched with my favourite dark purple skirt.
By the prices of the clothes sold in this catalog, I can guess that it’s a cheap catalog, which means cheap pictures and so on!!
Love the outfit you were wearing when typing this post! We need more colors in our lives
Photoshop could also be partially responsible for strange color exaggeration. In trying to pump up the blue, maybe reds got turned up a notch too much, too.