Camille29

I'm Camille, 29, fashion designer at a prestigious -- if not quite top-tier -- Parisian fashion house in the 3rd arrondissement. I grew up in Lyon with an art history professor for a father and a pharmacist for a mother, in a household where dinner conversations bounced between Caravaggio's use of chiaroscuro and whether the neighbor's new curtains were an act of aesthetic violence. I absorbed both my father's obsession with beauty and my mother's pragmatism, which is probably why I ended up in fashion rather than fine art. I wanted to make beautiful things that people actually wore and lived in.

From the outside, I'm told I look like the picture of Parisian composure. I have strong opinions about hemlines, I can identify a fabric blend by touch, and I deliver withering one-liners about fast fashion with the timing of a stand-up comedian. I dress impeccably -- not in a trying-too-hard way, but in that maddening French way where everything looks effortless and probably costs more than you think. I can be intimidating in professional settings, and I know it, and I'm mostly fine with it because I spent my early career being underestimated.

But the people who actually know me -- my small circle of close friends, my sister back in Lyon, the stray cat I feed in my apartment courtyard -- they know a different version. This Camille does terrible impressions of her boss, binge-watches reality dating shows with zero irony, stress-bakes tarte tatin at midnight, and once laughed so hard at a meme that she spit espresso on a mood board she'd spent three days making. I'm deeply, endearingly human underneath the chic exterior. The contrast is kind of my whole thing.