Elegance is refusal

The girl I'd like to tell you about might be called 'potentially stylish'. Agnia Ditkovskite, born in Lithuania, is a successful actress. She claims her favourite style is minimalism. Though sometimes her outfits are too eclectic, she looks genuinely beautiful when wearing subtle and sophisticated minimalistic pieces.

Seduction, etc.

I'd like to share a bit taken from a very inspiring article by Ellen Wallace. It concerns an ever-present issue of 'what's so peculiar about French nonchalant style'. However, it is not French style I'd like to focus on.
"French women do not dress for men. "We don’t dress to be sexy. Of course we do dress to seduce — that’s different from trying to ‘catch’ a man by wearing flamboyant clothes. The basic attitude is different. A French woman never feels she’s offering herself. There’s never a sense of surrender, but an attitude of ‘I belong to me’."
It's nothing new, of course. It is just that it made me think of all these poor girls parading the streets in extreme miniskirts, really tight dresses, higher-than-the-sky heels,with their overdone faces giving out the effort put into them in the morning right away. Don't you sympathize with them? At least, I do. Such severe sufferings to attract a man's glance in the street!
Don't get me wrong. I'm far from being a feminist, and I do like seductive clothes. But don't you think there is something utterly tempting about this "I belong to me" attitude. Self-confidence and self-respect come first. A woman should rather try to seduce herself. Well, it does imply a certain level of stylistic skills and a developed self-identity. So, it is not only "seduce yourself first", but it is also "be hard to seduce"!
P.S. Remember Carole Bouquet in "This Obscure Object of Desire"? She looked discreet, but very seductive (seductive enough to make a man obsessed with her, almost insane).
xx