Bourgeoisie Mentality

I live on one of Haussman’s boulevards in Paris in an old bourgeoisie building which fits Haussman’s charming “street-wall” façade regulations splendidly.  The ground floor is for storefronts mostly—pharmacies, bakeries, boutiques, and the like—but amidst the storefronts is a large double-door that acts as the entrance to the apartments on the floors above the magasins.  The first floor apartments have proper balconies with iron railing while the following second through fifth floors (in France, the floors start at 0) have similar façades as the first floor, sometimes with, but often without, a balcony or railing of any kind.  The apartment façade is completed by a mansard roof with a 45° angle and dormer windows.

At the end of the hallway from the street-entrance to the apartments is where the concierge lives, and where a lavishly carpeted staircase leads up to the bourgeoisie apartments.  There are two bourgeoisie apartments on each of the first five floors, one on the right of the staircase, and one on the left of the staircase.  These apartments each take up half of the floor and contain several rooms, much like any apartment would.  Whereas in the western United States, one might rent an apartment only until a house can be purchased, a Parisien is a little more like a New Yorker and rents or owns an apartment for the mere sake of living in the city.  And owning an apartment in this part of Paris is what one considers “well-off.”  There is no ill connotation to the word apartment, here.  Furthermore, it’s apparent by the red-carpeted staircase and the extravagant hallways and the red doors of the first-five stories of apartments that you are standing on the doorstep of someone who lives in Paris like one might live in Beverly Hills: no qualms about social status.

Yes, this is the apartment building where I live.  Only, I don’t take that main staircase to one of those nice bourgeoisie apartments.  Instead, I walk through the small inner courtyard off of the hallway on the ground level, where they keep the trash bins, to a door that leads to the old servant’s staircase: narrow, damp, wooden, dark—no carpet.  The staircase winds up to each floor of the building, leading to servant’s entrances to each apartment, until it comes to two floors of servant’s quarters.

(Rachel, notice apparition.  The team has debunked this as a dust particle.)

I was intrigued by the history of these old staircases before I was struck by their blatant separation of the classes.  After living in Paris for even a short amount of time the mentality one adopts concerning architecture and old buildings changes.  Though the 21^st century inhabitant of my building can take an elevator up to the sixth floor and follow the hallway to the servant’s staircase up to the seventh, the elevator is such an unabashed ‘addition’ to the building, one is immediately aware that it exists for the pure sake of convenience than as a statement of social status.  I didn’t realize it until I came to Paris, but that’s what an elevator is in the United States: a sign of social status.  In America, for cultural reasons of our own, the newest and best technology is expected of the rich; but in this bourgeoisie building, the elevator is not efficient, nor is it fast, nor is the building the proud owner of the elevator (assuming buildings can feel pride).  So what one understands, as she uses the elevator every day, is that if Parisien’s could have gotten away without adding an elevator to their old buildings in the latter half of the 20^th century, they would have.

As a resident of the seventh floor, I am quite pleased with the advent and addition of the elevator.  It took the maintenance of the elevator for me to understand just how pleased, for without it, all those living on the two upper floors of the building have to take all six or seven flights of stairs up to their floor.  As there is no electricity in the servant’s stairwell, it is impossible to see the steps, the wall, the handrail, or even your own hand—even during the day-time—until you get to the fourth or fifth floor, where seventh-floor skylights and glass blocks affixed into wall afford some light.  In addition, whereas the bourgeoisie staircase grants its climber a steady and gradual ascent to their floor, the servant’s stairwell is steep and too narrow to heft even groceries comfortably.  In my exodus to the seventh floor, I couldn’t help but imagine building maids, leaving their rooms on the seventh floor five minutes before their day began so they could stop outside the servant’s entrance to their employer’s apartment and catch their breath.

Servant's entrance

An American might ask, Why not take the main staircase up to the fifth floor—enjoy the climb, at least—and then take the servant’s staircase the last two levels up?  Our misunderstanding of any sort of class system makes this a fair question, albeit a non-applicable one.  There is no access to the sixth and seventh floors from the main staircase—you must take the servant’s staircase.  Furthermore, there is no secret door or hidden hallway connecting the two staircases.  Here, I get images of some young maid cleaning the steps of the main stairwell on the fifth floor, only to realize she’s forgotten something, have to go down all the steps to ground floor, out to the servants staircase, up all seven flights of stairs to grab what she needs, only to come down seven flights of stairs and up another five to get the job done.

After my own hike up the staircase, I was entirely aware of the class differentiation endured by those living atop the sixth and seventh floors.  And to be honest, the structure of the building ensures that not much has changed.  At best, the elevator was an attempt to equalize the social status of the buildings occupants, particularly in the case of the upper floors.  But even with an elevator which services the sixth floor as well as the first five, the lives of the two types of inhabitants are quite separate.  Much like what one would expect of the bourgeoisie and servants of late 19^th century Paris, there is no crossing paths by way of staircase; nowadays the only interaction is the occasional ‘Bonjour’ when exiting the elevator on the ground floor.  No one is treated poorly or looked down on—it is the 21^st century—it’s just the way the whole staircase/elevator system works.  But the history of bourgeoisie apartment owners and their servants who once lived above them explains the reason for that system.

While the seventh floor was most certainly the old servant’s quarters, the sixth floor of this building is an anomaly.  The hallway of the sixth and seventh étage is floored by red-clay hexagon tiles, rather than wood or carpet, the walls are textured white, and the doors are painted dark green, the color of Paris’s park benches.  On the first five floors of the building, there are two apartments per floor, each with multiple rooms; on the seventh floor there are sixteen individual doors to sixteen individual apartments.  Given that the seventh and final floor of the building has roofs angled in at 45°, the space for these sixteen apartments proves even smaller than any other floor.  These apartments are mere rooms; even ‘studio apartment’ fails to express their size, for when an American thinks of an old studio apartment, she thinks of Joe Bradley’s quaint living space in Roman Holiday, not an apartment the size of a guest bathroom.  The sixth floor has seven green doors, meaning the apartments are larger than that of the seventh floor, but still significantly smaller than that of the apartments below.  Though the exact capacity of the sixth floor is not formally documented, some old bourgeoisie buildings had one or two upper floors for middle-class families, merchants, or perhaps head-of-staff employees.  Now, the apartments on the sixth floor have been altered to create three larger apartments.

I had my mother ask me about my apartment when I first moved in, which despite my scathing review of their size, I am quite fond of.  I described it to her.  The man, who bought the old chambre de bonne, repainted it, installed a shower, a desk, and a small kitchenette.  I sent her pictures.  I received an email from my sister later in the week with connotations of the belief I was living in squalor, for, “Mom saw no toilet in the pictures.”  I explained that my toilet was across the hall in a separate room, which I had a separate key to.  In other buildings, the toilet is often shared between many tenants of the old servant’s quarters.

My own apartment

The view out of my window

Later, when I met a neighbor who moved in across the hall from me, and I started spending some time in her apartment, my suspicions of each apartment on the floor being owned and renovated separately were confirmed.  While each one of the sixteen green doors used to lead to a separate room, now, many of the rooms have been combined to create appropriate livable square-footage.  I recounted the size and shape of my neighbor’s apartment to my family, and expressed how interesting it was that three of the old chambres were combined to create her apartment.  My family asked several questions about her apartment—Why is her apartment the size of three rooms, and yours the size of one?  Why does she have a toilet, and you have to walk to a separate room?  Why does she have a shower with a curtain, and yours is merely an alcove?—all of which confused me; they were hardly applicable to the interesting fact I had just relayed about the history of the apartments.  Weren’t they more interested in the living conditions of someone living in a room a third of the size of my neighbors?  Weren’t they curious about how the old maids would have kept clean, or used the toilet?  Instead my family was preoccupied with why my neighbor’s apartment was so different from mine.

Then I realized the misconception at work in my family’s questions.  American apartment buildings are typically several stories high, and no matter which level you live on, each floor has the same blueprint.  Furthermore, each individual apartment typically has the same layout.  The structures are built to fit a certain number of apartments which apartments will house a certain number of families which families consist of a certain number of family members.  The person across from you has an apartment with a mirrored layout to yours; the person under you has an apartment with the exact layout as yours.  It wasn’t that they didn’t understand why my neighbor’s apartment was different from mine, they didn’t even fully comprehend the whole system of bourgeoisie apartments: the fact that the lower floor you inhabit, the better-off you are, the fact that the main staircase doesn’t even go to the sixth and seventh floors, the fact that in order to get to the top of the building, you are forced to take the servants entrance.  Hearing I had a studio apartment sounded more like I lived in an apartment complex with several other studio apartments, not that I lived in the top floor of a well-to-do bourgeoisie home where social class was separated by floor levels.

And it runs deeper than that.  It’s not that Americans don’t understand class and social status, in fact, our class system is just as complicated as others’.  It’s that in the United States, the poor, the middle-class and the rich don’t live together in any capacity.  The person living across the hall from you, above you, or below you, is usually at the same economic status as you are.  Even if the person who lives across from you is an immigrant, or if your child goes to a better school than the children of the family living below you, your economic status is accepted as being in the same range.  And when it isn’t anymore, and an American believes that the people moving in around them are of a lower class than they are, they move.  Take Harlem as America’s best-known example: what used to be an area inhabited by the wealthy and old-Dutch families of New York, in the 20^th century became a place renowned for crime and poverty.  It’s also true that there are poorer parts of Paris, where the well-off do not live, but the difference is that they never lived there.  The difference is that the French would never consider moving out of the Luxembourg Quarter just because their new neighbors might seem to be of a lower class.  After all, the Luxembourg Quarter is the Luxembourg Quarter.

The American culture of capitalism was another road-block for my family to truly understanding my living situation.  Surely, someone realized the profit to be made from renting the top floor apartments to young students, bought up the entire floor of sixteen rooms, and renovated them to create eight apartments—for there are eight tenants currently living on this floor.  Each of the apartments would be affixed with a kitchenette, and a shower, and use a bathroom down the hall.  The fact that my neighbor’s apartment was different meant that someone made the two apartments noticeably and intentionally inégal.  This makes no sense to an American—and probably wouldn’t make sense to the French either, if the argument were presented that way.  Except this idea of snatching up this real-estate city space, improving it, and renting it out for a profit is an American mindset, not necessarily a French one.  The French might be more likely to think, “They’re just the old servant’s quarters, after all.  Writers, students, and the elderly sometimes rent them because they can’t afford anything else, but the rooms are probably better suited for storage space,”—which is perhaps true. 

But this doesn’t answer the question: If the area is unfit for living, why doesn’t someone gut the whole thing and make it fit for living?  This is, after all, what an American would do to a nice bourgeoisie apartment building like this one, in the middle of a nice area like the Luxembourg Quarter.  The French wouldn’t.  The French wouldn’t gut any building built before 1915—if they’d consider gutting any building at all.  They’ll demolish them, and tear them down, and build up around them.  But they won’t tear out the insides of a building that is just fine the way it is.  Recall my explanation about the elevator; how if the Parisien’s could have gotten away without adding one, they would have.  They are not the proud owner of the contraption, it is just a convenience.  Similarly, gutting out the servant’s quarters to create nicer apartments would be like fixing something that isn’t broken.  Let me also use my own apartment as an example: the apartment may have been wholly renovated to include electrical outlets, a kitchenette, a shower and a heater, but the floor remains the red-clay hexagon tile.

Consider the idea that it’s in the blood of American culture to improve on what isn’t broken and to consider broken what is merely less efficient.  Europeans in general—particularly when dealing with domestic buildings—are not this way.  The British have a saying they use often, “I couldn’t be bothered.”  It’s not a thoughtless, rude or dismissive statement—it is recognition that there are some things there is no reason to doing, like turning the page of  newspaper when there’s still a story on the front page that interests you, or getting up for a chocolate when there are almonds in a bowl beside you.  It’s not that the idea isn’t worth doing, or that there wouldn’t be a point to doing it, or even that doing it is a significant amount of trouble.  It’s just that it works fine the way it is, and no one is really complaining, and individual proprietors are improving the apartments little by little, so why should anyone be bothered?

I lost my audience long before I could accurately explain these cultural differences I find so fascinating: something as simple as a staircase or whether or not an apartment has a toilet is attached not only to history but to mentality—a mentality which runs deep.  Buildings aren’t just about form or function; they aren’t just about changing and being changed.  In fact, it’s a little more than that.  Carl Jung afforded to artists the responsibility of tapping into the collective unconscious and presenting its truths to the world, but it turns out that cultural experience is organized not only by painting or tapestry, but by the very halls we walk in, and the very stairs we climb.  The detailed truths of how we consider the world around us are presented to us by small inefficient elevators, by the remnants of old doors in the hallway, and by whether or not we would gut our seventh-floor servant’s quarters for a profit.  The very fact that an American would do something so differently than it has been done here is proof that our histories have a place in our cultures, that our cultures have a place in our mentality, and that our mentality shapes the world we inhabit.

Attire and Adornment

Parisians are notorious for being well-dressed.  I've taken a few notes for you on what I've noticed.  (Images  provided by EasyFashionParis blog and GQ (except image of Hotel de Ville, and the Wedding photo).)

Men wear accessories, too

See-through shirt = normal

Casual day-to-day

Looking good is important to Parisians.  Both men and women have several types of looks, but they do not seem as varied as those in the United States; those who attempt to dress well have one basic look: classy.  This differs from America in that there are many groups of people who are very careful with how they dress, even if it is to look intentionally sloppy.  While the French do not fret about what they look like once they go out, and sometimes their hair appears un-brushed, it should not be mistaken for sloppiness.

Women wear cardigans, blazers and/or jackets, particular to an outfit and fitted correctly.  They wear blouses, never t-shirts.  Never.  Their blouses frequently are looser, and sometimes semi-transparent.  Seeing a bra through a shirt is normal, and not considered risque.  They are always a classy fit; loose should not be mistaken for baggy, which they never are.  Men typically wear dress-shirts with collars, v-neck shirts, sweaters, blazers, and/or suit jackets.

Or all three. Collared shirt, blazer, suit jacket.

Trousers/pants for both men and women are tailored and dressy.  While every type of pantaloons is worn, they are never baggy or too big, and never too tight, though may look tight to the typical American.  Women do wear leggings or tights as pants, usually under a pair of short-shorts, but sometimes under a long shirt or short dress.  Somehow they get away with it, looking great.

Tights as pants; shoes; blazer

Shoes are paramount to a Parisian.  Men and women alike rarely wear tennis shoes—only when they go running, and they go running in parks or around parks, never in city streets.  Right now it seems cobblers-like shoes, ankle boots, flats, and vintage-style spats are in style for women, while cobbler-like shoes, leather dress shoes, and spats are in style for men.

Men wear accessories: scarves, watches, and even bags are an important part of the way a man walks and carries himself around the city.  Women tend toward scarves, rings, and one necklace, always a part of the outfit--never several.  Hats are worn often in Paris, compared to what is normal in the United States.  It's part of the outfit.

Hairstyles seem more of a man’s realm than a woman’s.  Their hair is very particular to the man, though must look natural.  Women’s hair always look natural, is always perfectly cut and style when down, even if styled “naturally” (i.e. messily, to us).  Black women in Paris have long hair--extentions or otherwise, very well taken care of, curled and or straightened.  I mention this because black women in the United States typically cut their hair short, or keep them in braids.  Parisian women in general keep to natural-colored hair.  Also, Parisian women wear little to no makeup.  Younger women wear eye makeup, while middle-aged women don’t seem to care as much about mascara or eyeshadow.  Make-up, when worn is very natural-looking with hardly any color on their faces. 

Hat, jacket, loose shirt, accessories.
Particular.

Worship Service

The people who attended mass were not dressed for church in the sense that we expect them to be.  Everyone’s shoulders are covered, their legs are covered at least to the knee, but most were wearing day clothes.  Older women and men wear skirts, dresses or suits, respectively.  Even the kids leading mass wore normal clothes, not anything fancy or dressed up.  I think this is a fairly normal trait of Catholic mass, even in antiquity.  To come to church with attire one could afford/work in, though the rich would have certainly come dressed for Sunday best.  Though I do think it’s a lost “art”, as it were, to come to mass dressed for the Sabbath.  It is religiously expected, however, to cover shoulders and to wear shoes.

Business attire/Interview

Businessmen are easier to pick out than are the women because their attire is how you imagine every CEO to look.  Fitted black dress trousers, a fitted white dress shirt, often with cufflinks, and a fitted suit jacket.  Leather shoes—usually black.  Business men wear ties.  That is usually how you can tell the difference.

Funeral --> Baptism 

Since funerals are family services in Paris, and one cannot crash a funeral--nor are they often held at the churches, as the French are no longer quite as religious--I jumped on the opportunity to take notes on the attire for a baptism, which I walked in on at St. Eustache.  In attendance were the parents, their one or two children, and the baby being baptized.  Everyone--parents, children, and family and friends who attended the baptism were dressed in what we would call "Sunday best."  The Priest was dressed in his normal frock and hood, and kept his book on him always; he sung many of the prayers.  One friend of the family walked around in the chorus area where the baptism was held, taking pictures during the service, which I suppose was a normal expectation.  The children—girls—had their legs covered with tights, their shoulders and arms covered to the wrists by cardigans, and wore hairbands.  The mother and father stood around the baptismal font while prayers were said.  The women, including the mother of the baby, were dressed in skirts.  The men in colored dress-shirts and and dark-colored trousers.  Everyone was brightly dressed.  The men did not wear ties--you rarely see a Parisian man with a tie on...I can't think of a single instance.  The child being baptized was in nice clothing but was covered in a body-length white robe over his clothing.  After the baby was baptized, the father and mother were blessed.

Weddings

I have so far run across three weddings at various churches, two at Notre-Dame, and one at St. Sulpice.  The two at Notre Dame contained brides and grooms in quite normal western wedding attire.  Large white ball-gown-type dresses on the brides, and typical “costume” (to use French vernacular) suits (3-piece suits).  The third, at St. Sulpice was (apparently) an Indian-Christian wedding as the entire party was dressed in traditional Indian sari’s and I think for men what are called the Sangeet kurta (please pardon me if I’m wrong on that).  The bride’s sari was red, as I believe is traditional for a wedding sari, but—here’s an interesting note—she also wore a white veil!  As her ceremony seems to have taken place in the church (I came to the church afterwards while there were still some of her wedding party in the church, but most of them were outside taking pictures), I’m assuming the white wedding veil was a sign of the Christian tradition.  They also wore necklaces of flowers.  The members of the party wore various colored sari’s and kurta’s—beautiful colors.

She's not expressing her love for any particular team.
It's just fashion.

Sports Event

I have not been to a sports event in Paris, nor do I plan on it.  All the same, I do not recall seeing masses of people wear sports paraphernalia on certain days the way I have seen in Los Angeles on Laker-game days, or in London when Arsenal, Chelsea, or Liverpool is playing.  And because there are so many immigrants in Paris, one can always pick out the Greeks or Brazilians the day they're playing an English team.  I have never seen anything close to that in Paris.  However, during the Tennis Open, the plaza in front of Hotel de Ville was set up and reserved as a seating area for Parisians to walk in and sit down to watch the tennis matches.  No one dressed differently, but the square was always full of people.  Take my earlier comments about classiness into consideration and that may explain the lack of sports paraphernalia, though that does not mean the French are not interested in their sports.

Communicating with Attire:

The person has reached maturation

I believe a sign of maturation in Paris is beginning to smoke, as many teenagers do.  There is no particular piece of clothing a teenager in Paris would wear different from a young adult or man or woman in Paris to communicate he or she has matured apart from growing into more adult casual day-to-day attire, opposed to children’s attire.

I know it's difficult, but notice the ring.

The person is married

A wedding ring on the right or left hand—I have seen both.  There are so many immigrants in Paris, it is hard to tell which is particular to place or origin and which is particular to age, for some older women seem to wear rings on their right and left ring fingers, but younger women wear rings on their left ring finger.  Men also wear rings on their left ring-finger.

Distinctive Regional Identity

While there are very distinctive regional identities in France, and the French are very particular and proud of them, being a Parisian is a culture which swallows all others.  Therefore if a Frenchman or woman is determined on living in Paris, he or she will probably not hold on to a regional identity through clothing, but rather through patterns of speech, types of food, and their friends.  I am not talking about or including the immigrants of Paris in this assessment.  Their religious and regional identities are often more apparent, especially if they are first-generation.

Notice the diamond necklace.

Wealth

Wealth in this western culture is not denoted on obvious terms the way it might be in other cultures by certain colors or types of clothing.  Noticing wealth, therefore, is a fact of noticing brand-names, of realizing that shoes are made of real leather, rather than faux leather, that someone wears a new outfit every day, rather than mixing and matching what little clothes one has.  But as looking good is important to all Parisians, it is far more likely that whether wealthy or middle-class, so to speak, what you  own you will be good quality and you take care of well.  Wealth is also, of course, denoted by where one lives, and so may not always be clear in one’s clothing decisions.  As Parisians are careful and particular about their jewelry, one would have to know how to tell diamonds and gold apart from faux diamonds and gilded jewelry.  Furthermore, it is an element of being French that you walk with confidence and certainty.  In this way, the wealthy do not appear any different from someone who might be middle-class.

Poverty

True homeless poverty is simple to see in Paris.  There are many who appear to wear all they own, who beg in the streets for money, or who wander the metro carriages asking for money, or playing instruments for money.  Many of these people do not own shoes, they are seen in the same areas day-to-day, and they often stake out places where they sleep with what few possessions they own.  Poverty for those who try to integrate into middle-class life is less easy to spot on a purely observational basis.

Looking "nice"

(See Casual day-to-day) A woman is always dressed for the occasion, and looks nice wherever she goes.  Particular to looking extra “nice,” as looking well is always important to the average Parisian, are heels for women, and leather shoes for men.  Dresses for women, typically tight-fitting—what one might call “sexy” opposed to “carefree” or “windblown”—and suits or blazers for men.  Depending on the woman, she may wear more eye make-up when deciding to look nice, but still wears limited foundation, but has clear skin.  Her hair may be up or down, though this is clearly personal preference rather than tradition.