French Beauty Secrets- Madame Sportif

It is very hard to casually ask for beauty advice when you are first getting to know someone- especially if you are speaking French- but this is what I attempted to do during my last cooking lesson with Madame Sportif.

Admittedly I was a bit shy... I’m not really one to ask personal questions- for example, I rarely ask what people ‘do for a living’. (I just found out that one of my neighbors- who I have had numerous conversations with while walking our dogs over the past four years- is a real estate agent. I never knew! I suppose I’m not that interested in peoples’ occupations because not knowing makes them more mysterious... but that is another post and now I am veering terribly off subject.)

I did figure that flattery does get you everywhere and if someone were to ask me my beauty secrets, I would probably be quite flattered. So while Madame Sportif did not divulge as much information as I would have liked she did say the following...

French women take good care of their overall physique- physically and aesthetically. She said that they frequent beauty salons for waxing and skincare. (Madame Sportif has beautiful skin- not a blemish, wrinkle or sunspot to be found... and the other day while I was closing one of my windows I did see her laying out in the sun on her balcony, so I know that they do not have sun phobias like we do over here).

She said French women like to think about what colors look good on them and coordinate their outfits accordingly (not matchy- matchy, but with colors that ‘go’ together). When we are together she is usually wearing a ‘theme’ of colors. For example variations on taupe, or for our luncheon black and pink.

Madame Sportif loves to add coordinating accessories to keep her look polished. She will pick earrings that ‘go’ with her outfit and has a watch with interchangeable straps so the watch will never clash. (For our last lunch, her watch strap was baby pink croc- very cute).

And that was it... for now. She seemed amused by my questions, but was happy to answer them.

On a side note, I noticed that Madame Sportif utilizes le no makeup look on a daily basis. I can tell that she is wearing mascara and other than that she really looks as though she doesn’t wear makeup (but I know that she must!- her skin looks too flawless and her cheeks have a rosy color that must be due to blush).

I will try and extract more French beauty secrets during our next cooking session… à bientôt! xx