Why We Travel: Fashion statements in Venice and Paris

Right about now, I am desperately longing for my European days. It's not the day-to-day occurrences or the nightlife promising to keep me out until 5 a.m. that I miss the most, but rather it's the ways of life. Sometimes it's the passion, other times it's the food. Today, it's the fashion. 

As such, I have decided to choose a photo (or two or three) that I took and write a detailed caption about what it does for me in relation to the lifestyle I miss. Photos, in addition to just being "pretty" or "cool," have the ability to still life and to tell so much more about place or an item. My "Why We Travel" blogs from here on out will be photos related to topics that leave me longing to travel.    

If gondola rides were sins, then black-and-white pinstriped, collared shirts would be whispers in the confessional. Every gondolier dons one. Every tourist wants to buy one. And you’d be hard-pressed not to see children walking around Venice wearing one. 

In this photo, gondoliers converse as they try to fit under a narrow bridge off of Venice’s Grand Canal.  At the beginning of tourist season, in the midday heat, on some of the tightest canals in all of Europe, gondola traffic jams are common. Tourists, perched atop a centuries-old bridge, can’t play “Where’s Waldo?” because every gondolier appears identical. They can, however, beg their loved ones for a shirt and stop by any vendor in any piazza to purchase one.

Public transportation uniform turned fashion statement defines this European city based in canal travel. 

The children of Paris are exquisite. In the dead of winter, this child looks either like a porcelain doll or a little adult. Her matching fur hat and coat belong on the runway or on a mannequin instead of outside in front of a street-corner crepe stand.

But parents will still dress their children like wealthy angels, even though they know children will be children. This little Parisian girl, despite her mother’s glares, couldn’t resist playing with leaves that fell on the icy ground while her mother ordered a breakfast crepe.  

Watching this child makes me wish there were 11 more of her so that I could chant one of my most favorite childhood-story lines: “In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines, lived 12 little girls in two straight lines. They left the house at half past nine. The smallest one was Madeline.” 

This picture-perfect, real-life Madeline goes to show that they don’t recognize Paris as a fashion capital for nothing.