MR Style Icon: Jeanne Damas

You know those people who seem like they’ve been around forever, venerated superstars on par with the work horses who command the world, like Karl Lagerfeld or whoever? That’s kind of how I feel about Jeanne Damas, the French former fashion blogger slash current model and sometimes designer who re-emerged on the feed last year for just that reason following a collaboration she did with The Reformation wherein plentiful cropped flare legs were manifested as if from the very literal mental objects of my prefrontal cortex and body suits became an unofficial uniform. Here’s why she’s great.

1. There is a decent possibility that she is responsible for the resuscitation of vintage jeans in the fashion consciousness.

2. She makes espadrilles look cool. She makes you wonder if you can make espadrilles look cool.

2a. There’s also the ballet flat thing — she wears them the way these shoes weren’t necessarily made to be worn, but want to be worn.

3. I have never seen anyone else evince such a distinct sense of personal style with the use of simply a sweater and high waist pants and sometimes a blazer. On most other people that just looks like the result of a too-busy-to-think-about-what-I’m-going-to-wear kind of morning. No?

3a. That’s got to mean that at the crux of good style is attitude, right?

3b. Or full lips punctuated by a deep hue of red?

3c. Dark eyes that are wide?

3d. I should stop while I’m ahead.

3e. But I won’t. Because I’m not ahead anyway!

4. Her hair. How does she get it to look like that? Is it just naturally stringy and kind of straight? Is the answer dry shampoo at the crown?

5. Her bangs. But a word from the unwise: don’t try them at home. Re-approximating such a delicate centerpiece is no simple feat, which I learned the hard way last February.

6. Personally, I really appreciate a French person who is willing to wear a striped shirt every day. I think Napoleon would have beamed with pride.

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7. In the event I ever consider stuffing my bra, Damas is a good case study in the effectiveness of dressing a better-endowed chest. And it seems like tank tops are a mainstay.

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8. But the bottom line, I think, is this (which might be true of all the French women we deem iconic): she’s unflinching in what she puts on her person to present herself to the world. There is experimentation, sure, but it means much more, like the good kind of frivolity. It all seems to connote that sense of honesty and awareness that infers the effortlessness we try to approximate. But then again

There’s always this:

Maybe looking like you tried is coming back.

Right?

Feature collage by Elizabeth  Tamkin

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