Clothes, colours and sizes

Les vêtements: what you wear

Les vêtements are the clothes, and each piece has a gender to learn with it. Feminine: la robe (dress), la jupe (skirt), la chemise (shirt), la veste (jacket). Masculine: le pull (jumper), le manteau (coat), le tee-shirt, le jean, and le pantalon – trousers – which is SINGULAR in French: un pantalon, one pair. The opposite trap is les chaussures, shoes: feminine and almost always plural, des chaussures, because you buy two. Two accessories for the road: le sac (bag) and le chapeau (hat). In the shop you say un pull et un pantalon, at home ma robe, mes chaussures: the ordinary articles and possessives you already know.

Aujourd’hui, Léa porte une jupe noire et un pull gris.Today Léa is wearing a black skirt and a grey jumper.

Les couleurs: the colour follows the noun and agrees with it

A colour is an adjective, and in French it comes AFTER the noun: un pull vert, not un vert pull. Like every adjective it agrees: add -e for the feminine, -s for the plural. Noir gives noire, noirs, noires; vert gives verte, verts, vertes; bleu gives bleue, bleus, bleues; gris already ends in s, so the masculine plural stays gris but the feminine takes grise, grises. Rouge ends in e, so the feminine changes nothing – une robe rouge – and only the plural adds s: des robes rouges. One irregular: blanc becomes blanche in the feminine – un pull blanc, une chemise blanche, des chaussures blanches. And two colours never change at all, because they are really names of things – the chestnut and the orange: marron and orange stay the same with every noun: des chaussures marron, une veste orange. To ask, use de quelle couleur ?: Elle est de quelle couleur, ta robe ?

Elle met des chaussures blanches avec un pantalon bleu.She is putting on white shoes with blue trousers.

Quelle taille ? Quelle pointure ? and the verbs essayer, porter, mettre

Clothes have une taille (S, M, L, or a number: 38, 40, 42); shoes have une pointure (36 to 46). The shop asks with faire: Vous faites quelle taille ? – Je fais du 40. Vous faites quelle pointure ? – Du 38. If it does not fit, it is trop grand or trop petit. Three verbs do the work. Porter is to wear, what you have on right now or usually: a regular -er verb, je porte, elle porte, nous portons. Mettre is to put on, the action itself; it is irregular: je mets, tu mets, il met (one t, silent), nous mettons, vous mettez, ils mettent (two t’s, heard). Essayer is to try on: j’essaie, tu essaies, il essaie, nous essayons, vous essayez, ils essaient – the y becomes i before a silent ending, and the shop question is Je peux essayer ? The place to do it is la cabine (the fitting room).

– Je fais du trente-neuf. Je peux essayer les chaussures noires ? – Bien sûr, la cabine est là.– I take a thirty-nine. Can I try on the black shoes? – Of course, the fitting room is over there.