Life

Vichy is Trending. Say What Now?

Gingham on the Etro runway. Image by Getty Images

By Phoebe Maltz Bovy February 28, 2017

I was reading the hard news, aka the Zara website. Something caught my eye in the “trend” section: Vichy. Specifically, #vichy. Um. Why, I wondered, is Vichy trending? Does this have anything to do with Marine le Pen and the resurgence of the French far-right?

If you go to the “vichy” trend page, what appears are a bunch of gingham items, plus a random (but nice!) pair of silver boots. This vichy — thank you, Cathy Horyn — is just a synonym for gingham. It’s checked fabric, with little squares, as versus, say, buffalo plaid. Nothing alarming. Nothing to do with the Vichy regime, the “free” (collaborationist) zone of France during World War II.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy edits the Sisterhood, and can be reached at [email protected]. Her book, The Perils of “Privilege”, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in March 2017.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy is a former editor of the Sisterhood blog at the Forward. Her writing has appeared in several publications, including The New Republic and The Atlantic. Her book, “The Perils of ‘Privilege,’” was published by St. Martin’s Press in March 2017. She has a PhD in French and French Studies from New York University, and has read a lot of 19th century French Jewish newspapers for a 21st century American.

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