Sustainable Style
SUSTAINABLE STYLE INSPIRATION FROM THE STREETS OF NICE
With every new year that sprouts, there seems to be a renewed zest to curate our personal style to match our ambitions for the seasons that lie ahead. In 2023 we’re committed to sustainability and authenticity more than ever and driven to live life with “minder en mooier” or “less and more lovely”. This week, we’re especially inspired by Niçoise street style. On the fashion front, Nice is perhaps best known for Breton stripes, basket bags, and straw boaters à la Kelly, Hepburn, and Bardot. But after a casual inquiry into what the people of Nice actually wear (and a few nosy interviews later) it’s clear that the Niçoise closet is populated with staple items which will last a lifetime if you let them, rather than fast fashion’s answers to the latest impulse trends.
An auburn-haired woman on her way to the hair salon wears perfectly cropped pants, modest heels, and a wrap-around coat inherited from her grandmother.
IT RUNS IN THE FAMILY
While most of the youth seem to have manifested their outfits straight from TikTok, the more mature Niçoise appear not to have turned to pop culture to guide them in the curation of their attire, but to generational example. “As a teenager, my grandmother wouldn’t allow me out of the house if I wasn’t fully dressed as if for church – not even to run to the corner shop. By the time I was a young woman, I just knew how to dress. It was instinctive – still is,” a woman tells us on her way to a new haircut. Clothing that sees multiple generations through well-dressed decades? Très chic!
ONE MAN’S TRASH
In the absence of a particularly stylish grandparent’s closet to raid, however, the people of Nice might turn to thrift stores for their second-hand fix. Young people especially seem to be willing to rummage through big piles of old clothes in tiny shops in search of vintage designer pieces. Garments that are kinder to the environment, your budget, and greatly exceed the quality offered by modern mainstream fashion brands at the same price? Très chic!
Children’s theatre actor from Marseilles on his way to a rehearsal wears a thrifted black leather jacket adorned in fringe.
ALLURING ANDROGYNY
The continuous conversation around alternative gender expression has garnered significant airtime for the power of tailoring. Cheers to Coco Chanel for famously liberating women from their sole engagement to the dress with the masculine lines of her signature suits. Today, women in Nice are out and about in typically masculine basics elevated with feminine details and playful code-switching. Genderless tailoring paired with an experimental, personal approach to accessorising and layers of contrasting textures? Très chic!
Woman on a grocery run wears a golden cross-body bag, a boxy navy men’s suit with subtly pin-striped pants faded at the knees, large ornamental earrings, and sprint-ready sneakers.
Alas, beyond the Breton stripes, basket bags, and straw boaters, modern Niçoise street style is a love note to clothing that can stand its ground, in style and durability, and burgeon along with its wearer through years of grocery runs, haircuts and children’s theatre rehearsals. Perhaps all the way to Broadway and beyond, without ever becoming less dazzling.
