Drop Sleeve Shirt + Mick 2, both Emerson Fry

When I got back from Paris and gave you all my secret formula for how to dress like a French girl, so many of you asked if I could update it for warmer temps. And I totally get it – it is infinitely harder to look chic when it’s hot out. Layering isn’t an option, hemlines and humidity rise, and you end up spending the entire summer in a threadbare tee and a cotton skirt with an elastic waist. Which is not without its charms, but…sometimes, we still want to pull it together. So, over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing some looks that are perfect Paris summer style solutions. A striped shirt and white jeans is always a classic for summer, but these Emerson Fry versions are the perfect Parisian update. Your standby stripes are reimagined in a boxy, drop-sleeve cut and a greyed-out chambray fabric, and the white jeans have that perfect skinny/slouchy thing going, with just the right amount of distressing and a sexy little glimpse of ankle. I have absolutely no trouble picturing any number of chic Parisian girls sitting at a café with their friends, saying (with a toss of their perfectly disheveled hair), “Oh, these perfectly-distressed, perfectly-slouchy-yet-shrunken, perfectly-cropped white jeans? Pfffff…I’ve had them for ages!”

For me, the bonus is that while these two are an absolutely perfect pair, they’re also impressively hard-working as separates, and play unbelievably well with others – most notably, things I already have in my closet. A few of the many (many) ways I’ve been wearing these two into the ground this month:

• Top — Black stretch pencil skirt + ankle boots | Black skinnies + edgy slip-on sneaks | Just about any maxi skirt (I especially love the idea of an abstract print) + metallic sandals | Destroyed denim cutoffs + minimal tan sandals.
• Jeans — Denim button-down + Converse | Black silk tee + bright ballets | Slouchy cream tee + black sandals (cream and white being one of my new favorite pairings) | Relaxed heather grey sweatshirt + Converse.

I could go on, but you get the idea. If you’re as sorely in need of a little wardrobe refresher as I was, trust me – these are musts!

(PS — A little note for those of us with hips: I found the cut on this top to be a little straight, but didn’t want to size up. So I took it to my tailor and asked her to add a 2″ vent to each side. Perfect!)

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