A Girl From The North: How And Why Girls From Scandinavia Defeated French Women

At Paris Fashion Week, photographers were frankly bored and sluggishly clicking street style, which for the most part looked either dull or out of place and in any case completely out of place (micro-shorts and micro-bras literally turned into an ice crust on the fly and crunched softly). “Danes and Swedes are really cool,” the masters of the spectacular shot sighed. And one cannot but agree with them. Look at the numbers on social networks - the popularity of girls with white hair and hard-to-pronounce surnames is growing by leaps and bounds.

Their pages are not full of logos, do not hurt the eyes with makeup that literally crumbles from the phone screen, and do not resemble an exhibition of filters. On the contrary, each photo is style, naturalness and obvious self-sufficiency. It seems that the French women tried so hard to be “French women” that they involuntarily came to a common denominator and became remarkably similar to each other. They were replaced by new muses - strong in body and spirit descendants of the Vikings, possessing not only a "sense of snow" (as in Peter Heg's excellent book "Smilla and Her Sense of Snow"), but also a sense of proportion, as well as excellent taste.

About the feeling of snow

Firstly, there is no need to associate fashion for Scandinavian "beauty" with mass immersion in hygge and lag ─ it is difficult to find things less compatible with each other. There is no talk of any legendary sweater by detective Sarah Lund from the cult Danish TV series Murder. Sweatshirts with deer, hats with horns, cozy pajamas with Moomin trolls, thick woolen socks, if they exist in the culture of the northern countries, they happily remain behind the scenes. Northern girls dress in trendy things (trendy not by popularity and level of demand, but by the severity of the trend), change them often and with pleasure, are not afraid of experiments.

Swedish fashion blogger CarolinEngman

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Secondly, forget once and for all the legend that makeup and styling have not yet reached the northern borders and the only beauty products available there are soap and badger fat. What we are still striving for in every possible way - healthy, radiant skin and strong shiny hair - has long been represented there in the best possible way.

Residents of Denmark, Sweden and Norway are really cool. It is they who today have become the bearers of the "casual" aesthetics: light, effortless, which turns out by itself. They never look like they spent hours getting ready to go out. Previously, they used to say this about Parisians, but, alas, today most of them really stopped trying altogether and merged into a host of identical women "in black and with not very fresh hair." New muses know how to combine the incompatible: to be feminine, but not for show, simple, but at the same time interesting and fresh.

Danish fashion blogger IsabellThordsen

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The clothes and makeup they choose are always very "wearable" and human-friendly, but not boring or monotonous. In this case, the main word that defines each newly appeared image is the word "convenient". Finally, minimalism has ceased to be just a refusal (for the sake of refusal), but has turned into an informed choice of what makes you feel comfortable. It is this attitude that gives a feeling of inner freedom in dealing with things, and most importantly, in dealing with oneself. It is no coincidence that Stockholm is tipped to be the future capital of fashion.

Beauty as it is

In one of the interviews, a native Parisian, successful model and writer Caroline de Megre very clearly formulated the difference between French women and “everyone else” in their approach to their own appearance: “Where others see their flaws and try to fix them, we take on the case from the other side - we turn imperfections into virtues and make them what is then called our "unique style". " Sounds tempting, but time consuming.

Girls from Scandinavian countries live differently. Since childhood, no one compares them with others and, in principle, does not assess their appearance: this is cultivated not only by the family, but also at the state level. “You can be anyone, because beauty is a subjective concept” is one of the main mottos of the small northern states. As a result, no one proves anything to anyone: transformations lose their meaning, and self-care becomes a pure pleasure. As a result of socio-historical traditions in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, love for everything natural and authentic, as well as low-effort and, again (as in the case of clothes), comfortable, certainly flourishes.

Three pillars of Scandinavian "beauty": purity, simplicity and environmental friendliness.

Since the inhabitants of Northern Europe spend most of the year in the cold, the forced cryotherapy benefits them, but also dictates certain conditions for the game: very dense saturated creams for the night, the most incredible oils (from avocado to cedar) for all parts of the body and caring for hands, as "the main occupation of a woman."

Note:

Björk & Berries & Berris brand originated in a small village in northern Sweden and is made according to old national recipes

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According to statistics, in these countries, hand creams are sold twice as much as face products. The love of "northerners" to water procedures is also quite understandable: geothermal - spas, various health centers and, most importantly, a sauna - are their favorite ways to spend their leisure time. I must say that many beauty habits are shaped by the very lifestyle. This is the case when a healthy lifestyle is not a fashionable hobby, and not a difficult job of "breaking oneself over the knee" (such a very American version), but a natural state that is formed from a set of good habits. A lot of walks, sports, fish, vegetables, clean air - all this is beneficial and clearly demonstrates the fashionable slogan "beauty is health".

It is this natural approach to oneself that gives that ease and self-sufficiency that have so bewitched the whole world. I don’t know if this hobby will be followed by a stream of books on how to become “a real Swedish, Danish”, but for now it is a pleasure to watch the beauty and fashion experiments of “girls from the North”. Especially because they don't take it seriously and don't see themselves as style icons or role models, unlike you-know-who.

Photo: Getty Images, press archives