Françoise Hardy celebrates her 73th anniversary: ​​a return to her timeless style

Icon of the French variety, it was also and remains a muse for fashion designers. While she celebrates her 17th of January, her 73th birthday, decrypting the timeless “Hardy style”, a singular way of being and presenting herself to the world …

“I became a little icon despite myself. ” The sentence is dropped, vertical, without wrinkle, somewhat dryly, his image is true, in L’Express Styles, in 2007. It summarizes the glorious embarrassment, his whole life as an artist was crowned Françoise Hardy , follower of the blueprint, chronically unsatisfied and relentless perfectionist . In 1967, she was already singing My youth fout the camp . In 2017 beginning of the year, returned from the dead as she recounts in his latest book A gift from heaven … (Ed the Equator), she continues to deplore the general sloppiness and its own “decrepitude”. Rolling is her breathing. Like all great cynics, Françoise is perhaps only an optimist and a disappointed esthete. For a long time, she felt guilty of just about everything. To be the child of an illegitimate couple, not to be prettier than another, to always write the same song, to flee the scene, not to have been sufficiently worthy of love. Discernment is in his eyes the greatest virtue. She does not hide her horror of the fault. Whether it is taste, spelling or behavior. For twenty years, she dresses more than black or white, fitted jackets and pants, when so many others misrepresent their age in the shadows, silks and furs. Bulimic of readings in the solitude of her Parisian den, scarcely interrupted by the viewing of series, she adores the Anglo-Saxon literature of the end of the 19th century – the work of Henry James more particularly – but does not hide his aversion For Virginia Woolf (“a boring intellectual”) and Marguerite Duras (“of an appalling nullity”). She will not sing anymore. She thinks she delivered the best of itself with the album Crazy Love , released in 2012. She knows how sometimes less definitive. To ideologues on all sides, especially on the left, she does not hesitate to oppose a pragmatism, devoid of angelicism, and what she considers as common sense, implacable. So much the worse for the victims on his long path of sighs. Do not push it. Picking the right word a shopping friend Françoise Hardy saw himself as “a masterpiece in danger.” The formula makes her laugh. Not false…
A time bomb. The girl in the rue d’Aumale in the 9 th district of Paris has its tray and a contract with Vogue pocket drives, a passage through the Petit Conservatoire de Mireille song in boots and blades for only give relief to her outfit when intones All the boys and girls of my age on the set of the RTF, single TV channel late 1962. the refrain is composed only of four agreements, the lyrics seem drawn from Diary of a teenager, Francoise interprets it without effusion. But that October night, while the French are awaiting the results of the referendum on universal suffrage for the presidential election, the young singer to the fringe and pout triggers a true plebiscite. More than 500,000 copies of the title pass before the end of the year. In the middle of the Cold War, Hollywood pin-ups point their breasts and croups like missiles. Hardy is an equally destructive attack of modesty, which is now raging beyond our borders. Great ascetic binge, it imposes itself as the antithesis of the other French export product of the time, Brigitte Bardot, concentrated animal sensuality. No coincidence that the Roger Vadim rotated in the film adaptation Castle in Sweden Sagan. Dedicated “new idol Song” by Paris Match , she stands out above all others Yéyés, most of which fit the American hits of the moment, by his original compositions. The time of love , My friend the rose , friendship … Unaffected modes, Françoise not already love the bespoke, minimalist trend. “We are working our little pace, but the mark of factory familly, well beyond the clothing, the Antistar style” , she confided to L’Express Styles , during a cross talk with his son Thomas, nearly fifty after his debut. God created some women. Hardy created herself. Or almost. The photographer Yéyés, Jean-Marie Perier, his companion before Jacques Dutronc, then knows better than any other showcase the unalterable freshness and timeless modernity of one who will trust, decades later, have “horror taking laying ” , ” horror of exibitionnisme ” .
For style issue, Françoise did with his physical and needs , regardless of the fantasies it feeds. “I became interested in fashion when I started doing the scene and go on television” , she told it a few years ago. She inspired the Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo with the brand name Comme Des Garçons. She greatly influenced the work of Nicolas Ghesquière at Balenciaga. But despite the winks of the houses of sewing, she confesses more ready to shop at Caroll or Repetto, for reasons of convenience and comfort. His collaboration with André Courrèges, a couturier with futuristic lines, in the 1960s? An emergency. Françoise like sleek collections, but it is mainly the first to accept the dress for Dim Dam Dom , program directed at women, it should rotate. Today, hard to believe that these tunic-trousers-white boots were not drawn for the long silhouette of the singer. Ditto for the metal combination she asked Paco Rabanne, the eve of a tour to London after a successful shot by Jean-Marie Perier already immortalized in an outfit of “metalworker of fashion” under the Sun of Egypt. “My pace interested the English more than my songs! ” , Almost regretted Françoise it a few years ago. Nevertheless, in the words of Malcolm McLaren, the late Sex Pistols manager who made her sing on the album Paris in 1994, “it was the pin-up of all the rooms of teenagers and all artists In full ascension, like the Rolling Stones. Brian Jones and Mick Jagger , John Lennon , Paul McCartney and many others dreamed it becomes their girlfriend. ” Among these” others “include all the same Bob Dylan, it will meet at the end of a concert , more disappointed that charmed, or fire David Bowie, who cooled his emotions, will these gentleman words: ” For a long time, I am consumed with passion for her and I am sure she knew it. It was the case of all the men at the time, many women too, and most of us even today. ” Hardy, sex symbol, despite it? “The problem is that I did not really know them and that I was too shy to start the conversation. I thought they were a little weird. I knew nothing about drugs, I was very naive. Until I discovered that these musicians whose confidence seduced me so much were all completely smashed! ” , She pleaded.
Her hard drug was called Jacques Dutronc. Put in his arms by the artistic director of the label Vogue, Jacques Wolfsohn, in 1967, Françoise forgives him everything. His jealousy sickly when Serge Gainsbourg , the most beautiful women blackmailer, offers him the song How do you say goodbye in 1968. His pranks too, after their wedding in Corsica in 1981. The interpreter and I, and I, me and he therefore did not understand the personal Message , written by Michel Berger , she sent him eight years earlier, when their son Thomas was born, but dad is already sneak through doors Stolen? “And if one day you think you love me, come find me …” For his playboy , Hardy has yet stepped renunciations. She first left the scene, twenty-four, on the grounds that his memory failed him, she was a poor singer outside the studios, she hated to take the road … With the approach of the Quarantine, it is even her career that she plans to stop. Her record company is warned: she will not be an “old singer”. Short hair, androgynous silhouette, she swears bow with offsets in 1988. Hardy does not lack style or panache. But Francoise is punished above all for the attraction she feels for another man. Pleasure and it is definitely an impossible business. Fortunately, the youth did not fuck the camp. Despite his health is waning, Etienne Daho , Damon Albarn , leader of the British band Blur, Benjamin Biolay , Calogero , Julien Doré, among others, back in the studio. When his works Despair monkeys … and other trifles , in 2007, unauthorized review , in 2015, and a gift from heaven … in late 2016, the return to his memories, his indignation and some metaphysical questions … At home, in his Living room, an immense golden plaster buddha, legs crossed. But, to tell the truth, it seems very small in front of the icon Hardy!