This is an update of the amazing trip I took to Europe last summer. Slowly but surely I’m posting about every day I spent on that excellent continent. To read earlier updates, click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here. And here. And here and here and here and here and here and here.

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After spending only three days in Paris I decided it was time to visit the Bureau of Official Title Allocations (BOTA) and applied for a Permit to Claim Knowledge of French Fashion (PECK-OFF).

It was a nerve-wracking experience because those French officials are pretty strict about who they permit to talk Like They Know about fashion.

Luckily I had done my homework ahead of time, so armed with photographic evidence I marched right in to that office and told the PECK-OFF people exactly what they wanted to hear:

STRIPES ARE IN.

Every clothing store, whether Louis Vuitton or H&M, had just an inordinate number of striped numbers ripe for the purchasing.

So many stripes.

And not only for adults, but for children too:

I can’t tell you how many times I came THIS CLOSE to buying tiny little stripey French outfits for my unborn (and unconceived) (and as of yet still completely not planning on having them any time soon at all) babies. Only the knowledge that I had chocolate croissants to consume and pay for kept my spendthriftiness at bay.

I did, however, allow myself to get a bit carried away and actually try on a striped French shirt for myself:

Too bad it was the largest size the store carried and it was still three sizes too small to properly fit around that pesky spare tire of mine. But it was for the best because like I said, there were chocolate croissants to think of.

Anyway, lest the PECK-OFF authorities challenge my natural right to carry a PECK-OFF of my own, I took a few extra credit photos of (one of) Daniel Buren’s Stripes installments in the courtyard of some centrally important government building whose name I can’t recall (nevermind, I just googled it: the courtyard of the Palais Royale):

Stripes everywhere. I could have lived in this courtyard in a cardboard box and been completely content with my life. I dig stripes.

Can you spot the sneaky striped awnings? The idea of arranging the stripes in this courtyard just so is to mirror the stripes occurring in architecture throughout the city (occurring in pillars and banisters and columns and every good stripy thing).

(This lesson alone was worth the course fee to me.)

Stripes by stripes. Glad I thought ahead and took two striped sweaters with me to Paris so I could really blend in with the locals.

(Though I suspect that taking awkward photos of myself by stripes for ten days straight may have given me away in the end.)

But anyway, I applied to the Bureau and received my permit to Talk Like I Know, so now it can be official:

Stripes are in.

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