Except that I like Parisian taste even though it can seem a wee bit underwhelming initially. Back in 1945 when she first arrived in Paris, Nancy Mitford confessed to being disappointed with Parisian style. But sooner or later its subtleties and less-is-more-ness get to you.

Even though we’re currently banned from entering France, anything with a Parisian tag line does tremendously well in this country, be it Call My Agent or Sezane, the clothing boutique (motto: Walk in a Londoner, Walk out a Parisian) which often has queues outside on a weekend. So successful are the many French labels here (while many of our homegrown ones have disappeared) that, after living in Paris for a few years, Lucy Robinson decided to play them at their own game. At the end of 2020 she launched Aurélie, offering a British perspective on Parisian style with affordable French staples that she sources in Paris.

“I was the British equivalent of Emily when I first arrived in Paris,” she says. “I was 22, really blonde and wore way too much fake tan. I permanently looked like a girl who’d partied too hard.” Once she’d made some ‘good French friends’, she says, “they set about educating me”. Inevitably that entailed saying non to her a lot. “That can be a bit hard to take initially,” she says. “In the UK, your girlfriends are always saying: ‘That looks amazing on you.’ In Paris they’ll tell you point blank that something’s not working. Ultimately it’s really helpful.”