Buying clothes and shoes in French

Today in the French elementary course, we did a lot of practising on clothes and accessories description and buying, including a very silly catwalk…

I believe the vocabulary for clothes is the one that includes the most “faux amis” (false friends, words that look like their English equivalents but mean something else).

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For example, une veste is a jacket; un collier is a necklace; une robe is a dress; un gilet can be a waistcoat but also a cardigan; une chemise is a shirt; etc.

At the same time, many words are the same, or indeed borrowed from English: un T-shirt, un top, une tennis, un anorak, un pyjama.

However, today’s most popular expression went to the Wellington boots: no mention of Wellington or Napoleon in French for these. A Wellington boot is a rubber boot: une botte en caoutchouc (kaoochew).