Froufrou: a rustling especially of a woman's skirts; 2 : showy or frilly ornamentation.
Nineteenth-century Europe featured a lot of sophisticated fashions—especially in Paris, a city considered by many to be the fashion capital of the world. Women's dresses were often made of drooping layers of fabric (such as satin or silk) that rustled as the women moved around, and "froufrou" was the French word coined in imitation of the sound they made. The word made its first appearance in English in 1870 as a noun meaning "rustling." It later came to mean "ostentatious decoration," and its usage expanded beyond the world of fashion to other crafts such as architecture and interior design. These days it also shows up as the adjective "frou-frou," meaning "very heavily decorated and fancy," as in "frou-frou designs."
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