French Women Are Skipping Dainty Florals for This Bold Summer Print Trend

Eugénie Trochu is a Who What Wear editor in residence known for her transformative work at Vogue France and her Substack newsletter, where she documents and shares new trends, her no-nonsense approach to fashion and style, plus other musings. She's also working on her upcoming first book that explores fashion as a space of memory, projection, and reinvention.

I love florals. In fact, I think I've worn them every summer for as long as I can remember. Yet this season, I've realized that my taste is heading in a rather different direction from what most brands seem to be offering.

Everywhere, there are light, delicate, almost translucent flowers. Prints resemble watercolors, pastel bouquets are scattered across cream backgrounds, and dresses look as though they were picked from an English garden at first light. It's charming, obviously, but I've caught myself craving exactly the opposite.

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At the moment, I'm only drawn to exuberant florals—huge orange peonies, fuchsia dahlias, red roses that look almost artificial—and prints that are intensely colorful and deeply retro, evoking a 1970s grandmother's wallpaper more than a romantic cottage in Kent. The more "pop" they are, the more they appeal to me.

There is something profoundly uplifting about these flowers. They are not trying to flatter. They are not trying to be timeless. They are sometimes a little kitsch, often excessive, but they have character. They remind me of the fabrics in the holiday homes of my childhood: printed tablecloths, curtains faded by the sun, family photographs whose colors have gently softened with time. They possess a warmth and generosity that I do not always find in more contemporary prints.

I'm currently looking for a dress to wear to a wedding in Italy, and unsurprisingly, I keep coming back to this kind of pattern. I want a dress that is very simple in its cut yet covered in gigantic, colorful flowers, something that looks a little like an Italian sofa from 1974, in the very best sense of the term.

With flat sandals, a few gold jewels, and my hair pinned up, it feels like exactly what I want this summer—not something discreet, something that immediately gives the impression that the holidays have begun.

How to Wear Bold Florals

To wear bold florals without looking as though you've stepped straight out of a deleted scene from Austin Powers, a certain amount of discipline is required.

When the print is this bold, everything else should step back. The simplest sandals possible, very little jewelry, a discreet bag, hair tied up or left natural. No sophisticated makeup, no dramatic heels, no accumulation of accessories. The idea is not to add glamour to the print; it already handles that perfectly well on its own.

These florals work best when treated with a degree of nonchalance. Otherwise, there is always the risk of drifting into "wealthy Sicilian heiress on a never-ending holiday" territory or becoming a little too much like Tanya McQuoid on the yacht in season 2 of The White Lotus. This may be an admirable reference on-screen but is considerably more difficult to pull off on a Tuesday morning in the city.