Forget what the internet calls “main character energy” — those familiar with the Netflix froth fest Emily in Paris will already be aware that its real star is not the American flibbertigibbet of the title but her boss, the fearsome Sylvie Grateau. Played by Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, 59, Sylvie is an older and more sophisticated Frenchwoman, so laconic one gets the impression she barely wants to be in the series. Funnily enough, many of us don’t really want to be watching it either and yet here we are.
It is Sylvie’s wardrobe, rather than Emily’s pensées, that has kept me hooked. Modern Parisienne chic put through a cartoonishly catwalk Sex and the City filter (no surprise given that that series’s costumier, Patricia Field, is a consultant on the show), the result is a look so haute fabulous it prompts a sacrebleu from my solitary vigil on the sofa with almost every new scene.
Hot pink metallic knee boots with a ruched pencil skirt and billowing-sleeved crimson top? Off the shoulder Quality Street purple here, a woven raffia crop top there? There is one particularly strong zebra-print Vivienne Westwood corset dress in the new series that might prompt you to investigate the designer’s work after her death last week. In one episode Sylvie wears an asymmetrical bottle-green Alexandre Vauthier that is slit to the thigh. No self-respecting Frenchwoman would be seen dead in any of it but Emily in Paris also features a French chef who smiles a lot and is tall. Cinéma vérité it is not.
“I wouldn’t wear those heels on Paris sidewalks,” Leroy-Beaulieu said in an interview when the series launched in 2020 — and it is worth noting that the reason you never see Frenchwomen tottering Tina Turner-style in daft shoes is because they rarely go above three inches.
● Robert Crampton: Why I love Emily in Paris
Advertisement
While Sylvie’s fantasy Francophile style might well have sparked a trend all its own, her inimitable taste does pay lip service to some of that country’s oft-exported styling tips. Most of what she wears is figure-huggingly tight (Sylvie clearly isn’t having croissants for breakfast) and a lot of it is black. Beside her, Emily (played by Lily Collins) resembles the love child of Elton John and Margarita Pracatan.
Sylvie’s greatest strength, however, lies in her décolletage, which is so perfectly Gallic the Académie Française has probably catalogued it for the archives. Natural-looking, low-slung and the opposite of anything as obvious as cleavage, Sylvie’s sternum is regularly on show in deep-V neck tops and beneath blazers à la Helmut Newton-era Saint Laurent. If you are looking to copy, be aware that French fitters tend to prescribe bras that measure bigger around the ribs than ours, to avoid le back fat showing through flimsy silk shirts. Not, of course, that Sylvie Grateau has any of that.
