Bag charms, vintage fur, Japanese denim. If you took an American college student with a mustache and a mullet and then slapped loafers, cuffed jeans, and a leather jacket on them, they could pass for a Parisian, with or without that je ne sais quoi. 

I encountered this style archetype on Instagram, which led me to associate the look with students in New York City. I didn’t expect to see it in Paris. 

Part of idealizing France comes with valorizing an exclusively French way of dressing, but online youth culture has made this French style extinct. College-age kids now walk around in the same brands and silhouettes, no matter where they are. And they all have one thing in common: digital inspiration.

Paris is lauded as the fashion capital of the world, and it hosts Haute Couture Week twice a year. Haute Couture is the pinnacle of fashion as art, and it’s also uniquely French. Baked into the grandeur is a deeply ingrained exclusivity that defines the identity of Paris. Designers secure a place on the schedule only if they meet the craftsmanship and creation standards set by the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode. “Support for fashion culture [in France] is extraordinary: something other countries should really look at,” Dior’s Maria Grazia Chiuri extolled in a 2019 Vogue interview. “The weight and significance [other countries] give fashion [is] an essential part of focusing on national identity,” she explained. 

But in the digital age, national identity is fading away. During Haute Couture Week, one French event worker told me that although she attends fashion week in Paris, she comes home at the end of the day having spoken more English than French. Her remark struck me. Fashion and Paris are inextricable from one another, and here I was, speaking English at the most French event of the year. 

Fashion has seen a shift since TikTok became popular in 2018. Although high-end clothes remain coveted, the knowledge behind fashion has become completely accessible. Haute Couture Week is no longer an exclusively French affair; influencers and celebrities are invited in droves, and young fans enjoy access through social media. The youth in the fashion capital no longer boast a distinct style from their peers in New York City.

At Université Paris Cité and the Sorbonne, most students don aesthetics from their ForYou pages. The outfits of young adults are formulaic:

• Baggy jeans, Nikes, North Face puffer. 
• New Rock boots, faded jeans, leather bomber.
• Japanese denim, oversized trench coat, beanie. 
• Bootcut jeans, pointed-toe boots, fur-lined jacket. 

The average young adult in Paris is following the trends that their algorithms present them, the same styles that every other college student sees on their phones. 

It seems students who want to appear different from the typical social media addicts are avoiding these trendy items. Parisian fashion students, at Istituto Marangoni for example, are either wearing all designer or simpler, high-quality looks: blue jeans, gray cashmere sweaters, brown boots. Everyone knows about New Rocks and Jaded London, but are you subtly wearing vintage McQueen and upcycled fingerless gloves? Do you even know about fashion? 

The accessibility of dressing according to digital trends has seemingly stripped Paris of its distinct fashion identity. Take the recent example of a gavroche, which is a wide, puffy cap with a little visor. What was once the name of a Parisian child who wore the cap in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables now generally refers to street kids. The gavroche cap retains the rebellious spirit of the youth of the French Revolution. I found out about it on social media, of course. Fashion influencer and correspondent for Interview Magazine, Lyas, wrote an opinion article about this accessory, which he felt he solely, as a Frenchman, had revived. 

“As I entered the venue of the first of many shows that season, my dream quickly turned into a nightmare. Not one, not two, not three, not four, but five people were wearing a gavroche,” he remarked as he described his experience attending New York Fashion Week. “In that moment, I became a patriot, and the hat became a token of my Frenchness.” 

Lyas continued that the gavroche gained popularity when, almost a year prior, British designer John Galliano sent the hat down the runway during his 2024 Margiela Artisanal show. Models for the French brand stalked along the Seine wearing porcelain makeup and garments inspired by 1920s Paris. The glassy skin and avant-garde eyeshadow placement shook the entire internet, and the show’s fallout remains on ForYou pages to this day. What was once a uniquely French showcase took over the world—or rather, the Internet. Just as English traveled to Haute Couture Week, the gavroche predictably crossed the Atlantic to New York City.

There is statistical evidence for this global exchange, which is occurring on an even larger scale than on the runway at Margiela. The “DHL Global Connectedness Report” shows that digital expansion and trade peaked in 2022 and have remained strong since. McKinsey & Company, the corporate consulting giant, provides a similar yearly report to forecast the future of the fashion industry. Their “State of Fashion 2024” report found that consumers are especially eager to travel, physically contributing to the digital globalization of fashion.

The online exchange of styles, inspirations, and goods, especially in tourist cities like Paris, has direct effects on the fashion industry. The Japanese brand, Uniqlo, is pushing to open brick-and-mortar stores internationally; Ralph Lauren recently opened a café in Paris; and Zara opened another store on the Champs-Élysées. Brands are responding to consumers’ wanderlust, employing social media to further promote themselves internationally. 

Through the globalization of brands and aesthetics, fashion savants may be losing their sense of individual style and national identity. But accessibility and interconnectedness only becomes toxic when we feel social pressure to dress according to the uniform. Even then, that uniform might originate from the fashion capital that is Paris, which is also a crossroads shaped by a constant influx of migrants and students. 

When you reach for your Doc Martens in the morning, consider that a Parisian student is probably sporting the same ones. That North Face puffer makes you look like a New Yorker, a Parisian, and a college student from anywhere else in the digitally-connected world. And those baggy jeans, too, are mere testaments to our international cultural exchange. Maybe try to buy them used, though.‍