Last month, while taking in the spring/summer 2027 shows at Paris Fashion Week, I was eager to write about the street-style trends bubbling up around the showgoers in town. Which proved harder than anticipated. For one thing, the flashiest dressers had been given full looks by the brands whose shows they were being paid to attend, and reporting on those felt like a somewhat dishonest exercise in journalism. For another, the consensus seems to be that we are living in a post-trend world, and fashion people in particular have little interest in dressing like anyone else. And so I turned my attention to real-life Parisians, among whom one item seemed to proliferate: jeans.

No, this isn’t going to be a trend report on something as perennially popular as denim, but on a particular high-waisted, flared style that I spotted so frequently, I was forced to dredge up what little French remains from my GCSEs to ask a woman where hers were from as I caught her climbing onto a Lime bike outside Le Saint-Gervais bar. “Excuse-moi, madame, votre pantalons… le brand?” She paused for a moment, swung her leg over the saddle, and unleashed a torrent of French from which I managed to decipher just two words: “Anna” and “Gérard Darel”, the latter needing no explanation.

Founded in Saint-Germain-des-Prés in the 1970s, the brand has long been a shorthand for what the rest of the world considers the tenets of French-girl style: discreet, easy-to-wear classics with a cultivated air. (So cultivated, in fact, that the brand acquired the original handwritten Proust Questionnaire in 2003, and recently collaborated with the philosopher Alain de Botton on a card-game version.) Which is all very Left Bank, of course, but perhaps the clearest evidence of its credentials is just how commonplace Gérard Darel is in everyday Parisian life. You can scarcely move for its iconic 24H bag – a soft, logo-free shoulder bag that once named among the bags of the century, alongside the Hermès Birkin – during the school rush on the Métro, where it is generally to be found stuffed with binders and tangled wired headphones.

But back to the jeans – an American invention, admittedly, but then again, this is the land of French fries. What made my startled Parisienne’s look so good? Much of it comes down to the cut – something Kate Moss, a woman who found fame in nothing more than a pair of jeans, understands, having been photographed in the brand’s Anna jeans as early as 2019. Designed by former creative director Valérie Gerbi and named after her daughter Anna – granddaughter of the brand’s founders, Danièle and Gérard Darel – the design braces at just the right point on the hips, fits snugly through the thighs and flares outwards just below the knee, skimming the top of a pair of shoes to create the illusion of longer legs. The double belt loops, meanwhile, criss-cross along the waistband to give the impression of a cinched waist, while the back pockets perform a similarly flattering service for the bum.

And yet the technicalities of a good fit can only explain so much. Perhaps the true appeal was in the way she wore them – with white ballet flats that I’m convinced were from Repetto’s men’s section (the Luciens) and a navy three-quarter-zip jumper with the sleeves pushed up – or the ease with which disappeared into the Marais, hair whipping in the wind.