French Style

[0DeardsddMMyyyy0Falseen-USTrue]

I have now been working Brocantes in the south of France for over 6 months and have noticed something very significant about our presumptions (english) about french taste and style. Now this subject is totally open for discussion and I'm not saying that I am right.........but I think the world has been deceived over the years about French taste and style. Over the last six months I have seen many French people buy (at Brocantes and vide greniers) some of the most appaling and tasteless stuff that in the UK we would chuck. For example.....recently, I had a lovely old bed, about a 100 years or more old........found in a convent in France, I was only selling it for 60 euros. Next to me, another brocanteur had a modern metal white bed (with brass bits) up for sale at 100 euros. A couple came along......looked at my bed then went to my neighbour and promptly bought the white bed.......aaagh....not because I wanted the sale .....but just aaarrrgh. Have you noticed in all the books on French style and houses (provence, normandy, brittany etc) that the houses featured belong to english, german and dutch, very rarely a french person and if they are french they are parisien and have a second house in provence! So, this is an ongoing debate.....to finish my observation, I was recently told that a French electrician was doing some work for an english couple in their converted old farmhouse, at the the time he was just about to purchase a new villa type house.....however, he was so impressed with the renovation of the old Mas that he changed his mind, showed the wife the renovate dhouse and they promptly bought an old farmhouse and started to renovate.

Deards

[0bill thomsonddMMyyyy0Falseen-USTrue]

LAST EDITED ON 05-Feb-03 AT 10:03 AM (GMT)

Deards, I thoroughly agree. Our house in France (our second) is 250-300 years old and that rare thing - a sympathetic French renovation project that was tastefully furnished when we first saw it. We are trying to maintain the same style.

I think things are changing, slowly, with the growing popularity of shops like La Maison. But there are plenty of tat shops - and in England too. Magazines like Art & Decoration also show some very tasteful French homes - though admittedly a significant proportion of those featured are foreign owned or second homes for Parisians, as you say.

I think the prevailing attitude among the French is modern = good, ancient = bad. Most (quote) "discerning" English would tend towards the opposite - i.e. discounting modern design but revering anything old. As we both know there is good new design, and plenty of pretty cr***y old stuff.

Also, once you get inside some of the concrete pavilions so despised by the English they are actually quite nicely decorated and furnished - but most feature the typical French wallpaper. And they are warm, clean and draught-free unlike most older property so I can see their appeal in a Normandy (or Gard come to that) winter.

Just my two centimes worth...

Bill

[penny]

Wish I could have bought your bed.

[letrangere]

Have you noticed in
>all the books on French
>style and houses (provence, normandy,
>brittany etc) that the houses
>featured belong to english, german
>and dutch, very rarely a
>french person and if they
>are french they are parisien
>and have a second house
>in provence!

Oh, how true, I was saying exactly the same thing only last week. Open any Cotes Ouest magazine or similar and there you will find invariably a British owned house.

And I feel rather an authority on French interior decoration at the moment having recently viewed around 20 French owned properties. With one sole exception the interiors were all utterly hideous. One particular horror stands out - I joke not - every single surface in the living room/dining room and entrance hall was covered in dark brown furry flock wallpaper. I felt that if I stood still long enough I too would have been papered! Other horrors included dark wood panelled rooms with neo-1950s furniture. (In fact there was a lot heavy wood panelling.) A royal blue plastic sofa. A tan coloured plastic looking three piece suite. Raspberry painted walls with a tan/orange fitted carpet. A hall with one wall painted sky blue offset against a red carpet. An entirely black wall. Furniture that you would be embarrassed paying someone to take away and bathrooms (yee-uck)out of your worst nightmares. In the end I refused to even venture in to bathrooms/kitchens they were all so disgusting.

And why don't people tidy up when they have a potential purchaser coming round? A house has been on the market for several months yet the prospective buyer is expected to tread across a bedroom floor covered in a teenager's underwear?

I know, I know I should have more imagination and look through the current mess and see the property's potential. But I couldn't. Not in any of them.

Incidentally, all these properties were in the Euros 300,000+ price range, which just goes to show that money can neither buy you taste nor a tidy house.

Margaret

[Philippe]

>Have you noticed in
>all the books on French
>style and houses (provence, normandy,
>brittany etc) that the houses
>featured belong to english, german
>and dutch, very rarely a
>french person and if they
>are french they are parisien
>and have a second house
>in provence!

So?

Could it be that most French people do not really want to have their house advertised or even mentionned in the magazines or books you are talking about. I do believe that a lot of French people are attached to the privacy of their homes.

Philippe

[shirley1]

the best room in our village belongs to the post office each wall is a different flowery wallpaper

[DiscoBoy]

What complete and utter garbage you English spout!
Look up the word "style" in the dictionary and you will find the definition "French"

Country folk are hardly likely to wander round in the latest Dior or Channel creations are they? so why would they live in a show home?
Have you seen the Queen in her head scarf and manky green wax jacket and wellies wandering around Sandringham?
Horses for courses old man!
Look at French architecture, French cars, French fashion, even French food, they are the masters of style! you must be blind or completely stupid!
Would you call the rubbish that most British buy at IKEA stylish?
Of course the English are just so damn perfect aren't they?

DB

I'd like to some day be the owner of the first house on the moon...