When Your Everyday Wardrobe Already Looks Like a Costume, the Bar for Fancy Dress Is Existentially High
PARIS — The costume party in Paris faces a fundamental conceptual challenge: the population it draws from already dresses with a level of intentionality that, in other cities, would constitute a costume. The person who arrives at a London fancy dress party in a beret, a striped shirt, and a fake moustache is presenting “French person” as a costume. In Paris, this is Tuesday. The Parisian asked to dress as something other than themselves must go further than the non-Parisian who merely needs to go somewhere. The costume arms race is steeper. The entry level is higher. The results, when they work, are more spectacular. When they do not work, they are no worse than anywhere else, which in Paris is somehow more disappointing.
The Commitment Spectrum
Paris costume parties produce a consistent spread of commitment levels. At one end: the person who has sourced, constructed, or hired a costume of genuine quality, is wearing it fully, and has prepared a character to inhabit for the evening. At the other end: the person who is wearing their normal clothes and has added a single item — a small hat, a pair of novelty glasses — and is presenting this as compliance with the spirit of the evening. Between these two poles: everyone else, in varying states of partial investment. The French accept all positions on this spectrum without judgment, because the French understand that the costume party is a social event and social events are attended by social people who have varying quantities of time, energy, and interest in theatrical self-presentation. The hat is noted. The hat is sufficient. Nobody is turned away for the hat. The hat wearer is, however, quietly contrasted with the person who arrived as a fully realised 18th-century aristocrat including a powdered wig sourced from a theatrical supplier in the 10th arrondissement.
The Fashion House Problem
In a city with Chanel, Dior, and Balenciaga, the concept of “costume” interacts strangely with real fashion. Several Parisian party guests have arrived in what they describe as a costume that appears to be, on closer examination, a piece from a recent runway. The line between avant-garde fashion and theatrical costume has always been blurred in Paris and at the costume party it disappears entirely. The person in the Comme des Garcons structural jacket with the deliberate collar is either dressed as something specific or is dressed exactly as always. According to Vogue France’s coverage of Parisian party culture, the distinction no longer matters and may never have. The intention is costume. The execution is fashion. Paris refuses to adjudicate between them. This seems right.
The Morning After
The Paris costume party’s aftermath produces a specific Metro experience: the occasional figure in full costume travelling home at 2am through the Paris transit system, which has seen everything and responds to a person in full Viking regalia at Chatelet with the same equipoise it applies to all other human situations it encounters daily. The Viking presents their Navigo pass. The barrier opens. The Viking boards. Life continues. Paris, which has been the setting for events considerably more dramatic than a person dressed as a Norseman on a late-night Metro, manages this with the serene professionalism of a city that has decided nothing is surprising enough to rearrange its face for. This is the highest compliment Paris can pay its inhabitants. It pays it nightly.
Dress up, show up, at Virtuosal.com.
