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13 January 2008

Lost that Loving Feeling: Bijoux

jewel
Bonjour mon amis,
Don't you simply j'adore when people throw random expressions françaises into their writing and speech? Don't you find such people to have a certain je ne se quoi? Far from charming, I find this practice pretentious yet increasingly common. No one really cares that you know enough random French to pepper your English with elementary foreign phrases. The hip French word of the moment, at least amongst fashion journalists, seems to be "bijoux" which translates to jewels. Is it really that much more fabulous to say "bijoux" instead of jewels?

Kisses,
Sophia

7 comments:

WendyB said...

It's annonying, non?

Ashe said...

I had a teacher in undergrad who would call her students bijouxes when they did something good. I found that rather endearing, but find it kind of annoying to think it's being used in fashion context.

Anonymous said...

What are you saying, cherie? I'm tres unhappy because it seems you're targeting me specifiquement with your furor. Yes, I do add some soupcons de francais in my writing, but it's my thing.

I don't do it just because, but because I speak french and sometimes find myself thinking in french - especially when I write about fashion...

Are you taking me to task? Touche-ay! ;-)

Chic and Charming said...

Oh no! Ms. P&C :(. I was specifically sick of seeing "Bijoux" EVERYWHERE. I feel like the word just cries out for embarrassing pronunciation mistakes amongst those not lucky enough to have been to France. Frankly I have no idea how to pronounce it. It was actually a Vogue VIP who finally set me off. I'm probably going to also catch some flack from flutterbyblue who's jewelry line has an entirely French tag line, which I also cannot pronounce.

flutterbyblue said...

Lol! I was just reading your blog and thinking, "yah, that IS so pretentious and annoying!" I'd forgotten that my jewelry line is all about being fake-french (though admittedly I learned my limited French from travels to Senegal, not France!)

Anonymous said...

Interesting.. in 1956 a woman was on a magazine cover was hiding her baby bump.
In 2007, a woman was naked on a magazine cover exploiting her baby bump.

Anonymous said...

I find your blog has a joire de vivre, mon ami.