‘You don’t have to be French to be a Parisian,” Karl Lagerfeld once said. Lagerfeld wasn’t one to sugarcoat his views on who was or wasn’t chic, so I have always been encouraged by his generosity here. As well as by the example of Betty Catroux – muse to Yves Saint Laurent, and the subject of an exhibition just opened at the YSL museum in the city – who is Gallic chic to the core, but was born in Brazil. I have had two decades of Paris fashion weeks to try to master the faux-Parisian look and, while I still haven’t nailed it, I like to think I have picked up a bit here and there.

I have the getting-dressed equivalent of speaking holiday-French, I guess. I don’t pass for a native, but I can put together an outfit that allows me to get seated at Cafe de Flore on Boulevard Saint-Germain at a table that isn’t the one where the loo door bangs in your face.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Betty Catroux exhibition at the Yves Saint Laurent museum in Paris. Photograph: Publicity Image

Parisian chic is more in vogue now than it ever was, because it is the most sustainable way to be stylish. The Parisian thing was never about trends or dramatic reinventions. It has always been about an elegant line, a flattering colour, a charming detail; about a modern wardrobe of pieces that harmonise, rather than about standalone outfits and abrupt changes of direction. In Britain, we tend to think of having great personal style as something flamboyant. We celebrate people who wear hats every day, or punk leathers, or three colours in every outfit, or ballgowns to work, or whatever. The allure of the Paris look – to women all over the world – is the idea that you can have great personal style while basically wearing normal clothes. You can be chic in jeans and a navy jumper, every day – although it is precisely this subtlety that makes chic tricky to nail. Jeans and a navy jumper, yes – but they have to be exactly right.

Here are a few things that Paris isn’t about any more: skirt suits; chignons; strings of pearls; shift dresses; ribsticker-snug jackets; lapdogs; and cigarettes. Parisian style isn’t reinvented every season, but that doesn’t mean the look doesn’t change – on the contrary, when a look is simple, the details are everything. (Yes to silk scarves, but on your ponytail or your handbag, rather than around your neck.) The one-line take on how Paris has evolved is that the look is less precious than it was – although it retains certain airs and graces. Paris has not quite embraced the athleisure revolution to the extent that Britain has – a degree of snobbery around sportswear remains – although trainers are now subbed in for kitten heels, to a large extent. But there is more to it than that, obviously.

I am writing this at Paris fashion week, AKA the mothership of chic. For our purposes today, I am going to ignore all the headline-grabbing trends I have seen – the latex leggings, the supersized hats, the inevitable face masks – because, while these are fun to look at, they don’t, when it comes down to it, have anything helpful to contribute to the what-shall-I-actually-wear issue. It is much more useful to look at what collections tell us about modern Parisian chic – and how we can translate that into our wardrobes.

The first takeaway is that you are going to want to wear your biggest coat. Anything neat and snugly tailored looks old, now – a bit Guy-Ritchie-gangster-goes-up-west. Trench coats are still everywhere on the front row. Balmain, the spiritual home of bodycon, opened with a procession of oversized black coats. In her new style book, Older but Better, but Older, Caroline de Maigret, the model and Chanel ambassador, advises buying jackets and coats one size up, and all week I have been noticing how many chic French (or French-looking) women do exactly that. The shape you want in a coat or blazer is oversized, not baggy, so you need a strong shoulder.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Margot Robbie in 90s Chanel at the 2020 Oscars. Photograph: Steve Granitz/WireImage

The standout look of the Givenchy show was a cream trouser suit that was oversized, but with a pin-sharp silhouette. At Chloé, a grey tweed blazer cinched with a wide belt, over high-waisted trousers and a checked shirt, looked a useful template for real-life dressing.

You will notice, looking at the photos here, that the models aren’t smiling. Well, actually, you may not have noticed, because catwalk models have never been a smiley bunch, but even by fashion-week standards there is a certain coolness to the emotional tone of modern Parisian chic at the moment: Billie Eilish, but make it fashion. Not many florals, and when they do turn up they tend to be the midnight-garden dark-floral variety. The Chanel designer Virginie Viard described the tone of the season as “emotion, but without any frills”. Her catwalk was a love letter to the unmatchable chic of black and white. White on the top half, black on the bottom: a simple formula for harmony. Monochrome and beige are timeless staples of Parisian chic. This season, in keeping with the drama of the zeitgeist, splashes of crimson are making a comeback. Black and red – a classic YSL colour combination – was everywhere from Alexander McQueen and Valentino to Stella McCartney.

A new look doesn’t have to mean new clothes. These are the kind of pieces that you can source via a rummage in your wardrobe. Paris is championing vintage, at the highest level: archive Chanel is becoming a power move, on Vogue covers and on the red carpet. After Margot Robbie wore a 90s Chanel couture gown to the Oscars, Eva Green wore an archive Chanel piece to the César awards in Paris this week. That Chanel, a house that has, arguably, launched more trends than any other, is putting its might behind vintage as a status symbol is a leap forward for Paris fashion week.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Chanel’s seven-league boots, AW20, Paris fashion week. Photograph: WWD/Rex/Shutterstock

A great leap forward calls for sturdy footwear. The days when Parisian chic required dainty courts are over. The word on the ground from Paris is that sturdy boots are the new trainers: at Hermès and Dior, chunky riding boots ruled. Virginie Viard called her flat, biker-meets-wellie-style Chanel footwear “seven-league boots”, after the kind that Lagerfeld used to wear. (In Charles Perrault’s fairytales, a seven-league boot allows the wearer to travel seven leagues – around 21 miles – in each stride.) The 2020 version of French chic is surely its most practical incarnation ever. This look is a fashion-week dream that works for real life. Too good not to copy, frankly. I am proud to call myself a faux-Parisian.