The last time Selena Gomez spent time in Paris, she decided to dress like a Parisian, because she was in Paris.

In other words, Erin Walsh styled the musician in a puff-sleeved, polka-dot dress taken from Jacquemus’s Marie Antoinette-inspired fall 2023 collection. She looked like she might have been studying the 19th-century portraiture of Frédéric Bazille.

Or a GCSE French language textbook.

On that same trip to Paris Fashion Week, Gomez was photographed in an outsized suit with a pair of visible, pale-blue boxers poking above the waistband.

Though a more sensible take on the underwear-as-outerwear trend – popularized at Miu Miu, Loewe and Bottega Veneta – it perhaps laid the groundwork for her most recent (and risqué) Parisian look: a pantless, crystal-trimmed Valentino suit.

Gomez wore that blazer-minidress hybrid with Jimmy Choos and a stone-surfaced Aupen bag.

All of this reminds me of Anthony Vaccarello’s fall 2023 collection at Louis Vuitton: an abstract send-up of “French Girl” style.

There were cliché pearl necklaces and Carine Roitfeld cigarette pants, but there were also sumptuous dressing gowns and pajama tops made in reference to Parisian people’s (so-called) adulterous tendencies.

Might Gomez’s exposed boxers (and hastily-styled pantless moments) also be paying homage to this most enduring French stereotype?