what the girlies are wearing this euro summer

do i dress the way i dress because i live in Europe? or have we just started treating Europe like it was built for our amusement?

euro summer is almost over, and i’ve had my fill of tourists. i live in Florence, where all summer, american girls in peasant skirts and bandanas have flooded the streets in seemingly unending waves. my friends and i play a game: one point for every peasant skirt, one point for every bandana, five points if she’s wearing both at the same time. i once walked past a group of 22 girls: 17 of them had the skirt-bandana combo! ka-ching!

the fashion of tourists is as fascinating to us locals as the fashion of locals is to tourists, and i am, of course, still both. traveling is a way of connecting with the local fashion too, not just the history or the language or the food. every country, every city, every neighborhood has its own traditional dress and its own modern trends. watching how people move through a place they actually call home is half the reason to go anywhere.

so while i genuinely wonder how the peasant skirt and bandana became the unofficial euro summer uniform, i’m just as curious about what these girls make of the places they’re passing through.

the trouble is that most of the “this is what girls in Milan/Rome/Paris are wearing” content is thinner than i’d like. i keep waiting for the analysis and it rarely comes. the last straw was a video about Milanese women, their whole style summed up as business-like: slacks, button-ups, block heels. the influencer then recreated the look to wander the city for the day. which baffled me, because those women weren’t dressing to explore the city. they were dressing for the office. they had somewhere to be at nine.

it’s an easy thing to forget, that Europeans work and live in the cities we visit. in Florence, a small city swallowed by a massive influx of visitors, you can feel the strain of it. “it’s not Disneyland” is the local refrain, usually muttered by someone just trying to bike to work through streets full of people wandering about, taking pictures, with no awareness of their surroundings (i say this with love, truly).

and the machinery of tourism is genuinely sad to watch. restaurants that cater only to visitors, neighborhoods slowly shedding their character, whole cities putting on a performance for people who will only stay for a day or two. it happens everywhere, not just here. but there’s a way to move through a place with more awareness, and it starts with a simple acknowledgment: the city wasn’t built for you. it isn’t a performance. it’s beautiful and alive and chaotic because people actually live here, and they don’t owe you the perfect picturesque fantasy.

so yes, this applies even to fashion commentary. you’re not at fashion week, you’re a guest in someone’s ordinary tuesday. what the girls are wearing in Milan or Madrid or London, on a weekday, in the middle of their real lives, is exactly that: their real lives. women everywhere dress one way for work, another for aperitivo, another for a date, another for a beach day. the “local look” you’re studying might just be what someone threw on to catch the tram.

and we do the same thing, don’t we? i’m fairly sure your everyday outfit back home isn’t a peasant skirt and bandana with sneakers and a bag built to hold a water bottle, a camera, and a fan. we all dress differently on vacation. we become a slightly performed version of ourselves the moment we leave home. there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as we don’t mistake our version of a place for the place itself.

so next time you see a well-dressed Italian woman in her slacks and block heels, don’t file her away for a trend report. remember she’s probably late for something. remember she has a desk to get to, a meeting, a kid to pick up, a life that was here long before you arrived and will go on long after your flight home.

the best thing i’ve learned from living in a city other people come to visit is that the good stuff was never on the surface anyway. it’s the small bookshop where the owner recommends weird books i’ve never heard of. it’s the bar where they have cheap wine on tap. it’s the church you duck into by accident to escape the rain. none of that shows up in a “what are they wearing” video or “what you should do on a two-day trip” carousel, because none of it is a look. it’s just life, quietly happening whether you photograph it or not.

so wear the peasant skirt. i mean it, wear whatever you want. just remember you’ve wandered into someone’s home, and the kindest thing a guest can do is pay attention.

fin.

bree beauregard

thanks for reading and being here! if you can’t become a paid subscriber right now but would like to support my work, you can buy me a coffee :) and join us on discord!