Jeanne Damas on Paloma Picasso and How to Avoid Dressing Like a Tourist in Paris

Everyone and their mother is heading to Paris for the 2024 Olympics—the first time the French capital has hosted the Games since 1924. With a projected 15 million visitors streaming into the city this summer, tourists will be a dime a dozen.

While fashion can be used as a tool to stand out, dressing like an out-of-towner draws attention for all the wrong reasons. Luckily, French Girl Style ambassador Jeanne Damas—designer and founder of Rouje—is here to help.

Some things, of course, are undeniable. If you’re gawking at the Eiffel Tower, chances are you’re not a local. “It’s more about the neighborhood,” Damas says. In the nineteenth and twentieth arrondissements “it’s impossible that you see a tourist here,” she observes, because they just don’t tend to journey that far. At other times, certain items of clothing can make visitors stand out to her. “A baseball cap! I think that seems so tourist,” she notes.

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For anyone hoping to blend in this summer, Damas suggests some infallible staple pieces: “I think there is a certain minimalism in Paris,” she says. “People wear color-block [looks], no prints, simple flat shoes—maybe ballerinas.”

Given her fashion background, it made perfect sense for Damas to take on the role of designer Paloma Picasso—one of Pablo Picasso’s daughters—in Hulu’s Becoming Karl Lagerfeld. “She was completely original and out-of-the-box. For example, it was the ’70s, but she would always go to the flea market to buy some vintage clothes from the ’40s. At this time it was not really fashionable to dress like that,” Damas says of Paloma. “She really inspired Yves Saint Laurent for his collection because, for him, [her style] was completely new and inspiring. She really was a wonderful fashion icon.”

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Despite her pedigree as a French style expert, Damas adores Paloma Picasso’s exuberant fashion philosophy. “We are so boring about style because in France we all dress the same. It’s all simple jeans, trench, blazer,” she says. “When I come to New York, it’s so inspiring. Everybody is wearing crazy clothes, transparency, they don’t care. It’s really original.”

Vogue.com