Post cards from Paris part one "Streamlined Elegant Simplicity"

A variety of architectural styles layered with elegance creates an ever-classic Paris vista
A beautiful breezeway just down from our hotel- love the ornate urns paired with simple clusters of daffodils
Simple yet striking display outside of a garden store using a highly decorative statuette and the humble but classic tin watering can and window box planter topping a simple metal table
Clean and neat order within a flower stall offering up a bevvy of wonderful potted plants
The avenue area leading up to the Eiffel Tower where I'm enjoying its tree-lined elegant sparity
Pink and Green as interpreted by Parisian cafe' styling: pink seating and green shrubbery with very clean, spare structural lines

Paris in the Spring is a truly beautiful thing! James and I are so enjoying this week of all-things-Parisian-elegant...the food, the wine, the chocolates, the fashion, the architecture, the language, the arts and so forth. Most striking to me right now is the elegant simplicity and neat-styling glimpsed all around this city.

Turn any corner, stroll down an avenue, peek into a shop window or espy a little tucked away garden and what I'm noticing is an oh, so elegant paring-down as to what is essentially elegant and not a smidgen more. This is so refreshing to experience coming from a cultural norm in America where if something's pretty, hey, it's considered even better super-sized, collected in mass amounts or layered n' layered. And I completely understand this layering impulse with coming from a family where things-layered such as clothing, chintz fabrics and sterling picture frames on a side table are just standard modus operandi: the proverbial English Country Home look reinterpreted through the ages as an integral part of what is Southern Preppy.

However, I am finding myself really inspired by this more-streamlined and orderly Parisian lifestyle elegance. I've been streamlining, and "opening-up" our household here on the island gradually over the past couple of years but after this time spent in Paris, I may amp it up a bit more upon returning home.

Here are some quick photo snaps taken while James and I have been sauntering around Paris that illustrate this elegantly spare and clean-lined Parisian lifestyle ethos... tres' jolie oui?