PARIS FASHION TWEAK
A familiar story of female pluckiness gets a touch of French flair in this welcome diversion from 2020, writes Margaret Gardiner
Like a wild flower in the desert of 2020, Emily in Pariswafts onto the small screen all froth and distraction. Created by Darren Star, who brought us Sex and the City , it stars Lily Collins as a young American who lands in Paris unable to speak the language. She soon finds herself awash in French attitude, sensibility and, of course — with Patricia Field (the costume designer on Sex and the City and The Devil Wears Prada) creating the looks — fashion. There’s a hunky love interest, a learning curve, and Paris landmarks to round it off.
Collins, who looks like a modern-day
Audrey Hepburn, is perfectly cast as Emily. She’s a combination of smarts and optimism, captioning selfies with pithy observations and finding inventive solutions to challenges. There are echoes of Anne Hathaway’s role in The
Devil Wears Prada, that of a hard-working young woman who overcomes prejudice to get ahead.
The daughter of Genesis singer Phil Collins and his second wife, Jill Tavelman, Collins, 31, chatted to me from her home in Los Angeles. Although her character’s clothing is pulled from Chanel, Dior, Givenchy, Asos, Louboutin and Vivienne Westwood, to name a few labels, she debunks the theory that Emily in Paris is just a new version of Sex and the City.
“I admire that Carrie was vocal, work-driven and self-assured. She was unapologetically herself,” says Collins. “That’swho Emily is; but Emily finds herself in different ways in a foreign city. There are different issues now that weren’t addressed in Sex and the City.”
She refers obliquely to the cast of white women in the hit TV show. “Representation, inclusion and diversity is an important thing for me moving forward in any project I’m part of,” she says.
And what was it like collaborating with the award-winning costume designer?
“Patricia is a genius. She’s mastered the art of creating clothing as a character itself and an extension of the character’s personality, ” she says. “She’s such a collaborator. I didn’t realise she’d ask my opinion so much. She sent PDF files of different designers’ shoes, bags and outfits, saying, ‘Who is Emily?’ I’d circle the things I liked and send it back.
“During my first fitting in Paris, with so many of the items in the room, I thought, ‘Wait, I actually got to help pick the outfits?’,” she says.
The cultural differences between an “American in Paris” and real Parisians provides much of the humour. “Darren and the writing team wrote most of the episodes while living in Paris. Experiences we’d all had were written into the show. In the 10 episodes we go into different situations people haven’t seen before in other shows,” she says.
“Being English, I grew up going to Paris, sometimes for Fashion Week, but I wasn’t there longer than a couple of days. Now the city is a work location. We were there for four months so I got to become a local of sorts. We filmed in so many areas, and on weekends I’d explore. I had experiences like Emily; my heating stopped working for two weeks, I didn’t have hot water for two weeks, there was construction everywhere, my elevator stopped working.”
As we’re ending our conversation I wonder aloud when she realised her father was famous. She tilts her head and says: “I remember being at Disneyland on my dad’s shoulders and there was a man walking towards us with my dad’s face on his T-shirt. I couldn’t understand it. The guy saw my dad and asked for a photo. It was a weird moment: why does this guy want a picture of my dad and why is my dad’s face on his shirt? I started to understand. It was aweird experience.”