Surely some mistake. That was my reaction to the news that 4,000 readers of Yours magazine had voted Diana, Princess of Wales, the style icon of the past 50 years. Out of consideration for her sons, it has always seemed churlish to write unnecessarily ill of her. Suffice to say that her chief contributions to the style lexicon were blue mascara, tights with bows and helmet hair – and yes, I know that a good part of her reign was during the hideous Eighties, but plenty of other stylish women emerged from that era with less incriminating baggage. By contrast, Audrey Hepburn (to cite just one of the contenders Diana pulverised in this poll) gave us Capri pants, gamine chic and eyeliner.
Perhaps what this tells us is that the public wants to empathise with its heroines as much as put them on a pedestal. Trust the British to like their icons with a cosy patina: feet shod by Christian Louboutin, then firmly plonked in clay. And maybe it’s not just the British. Our French sisters are not exactly crazy about Carla Bruni. “Shame”, “embarrassment” and “tacky” are three words being bandied about. Admittedly, all photos of the presidential couple so far have sexual tension oozing from them like an overripe brie. But perhaps if Frenchwomen turned their minds to the untold good that their new First Lady can do for their fashion industry – under attack from cheap Chinese imports, threatened by an economic slowdown and competition from the catwalks of London, New York and Milan – they may overcome their squeamishness. No sign of a thaw yet, though. One can understand why. First, she is the epitome of what a president’s wife would look like – if the director of Legally Blonde were to make a film about presidents’ wives. Secondly, even in her supermodel heyday, no one found her very interesting. Ultra-professional. Multi-lingual. Upper-class. But not someone you could warm to. Neither US nor British Vogue has profiled her. Not even a Q&A on her favourite jeans. Perhaps it’s because, despite the impressive configuration of bones, hair and legs, she looks, as one blogger has noted, like a starving squirrel, a cute but vicious predator.
She’s also – heinous crime in this post Sex and the City era – a crashingly boring dresser;it’s all long coats, V-necks and jeans, with the occasional tedious black dress thrown in – none of it likely to land her in a circle of shame in Heat! et al. Where’s the spectator sport in that? It could be different, though. French houses must be falling over themselves to dress her. And whereas British political wives are expected to dress in Wallis, she can have her pick of Dior. As an ex-super, she’ll know how to work those tricky bits from Chlo?, Rochas and Balenciaga. One could say it’s her duty, both to the French fashion industry and our entertainment, that she does so pronto.
By the way, when I say that “we” never warmed to her, obviously I mean women. The male paparazzi who tailed her when she dated Mick Jagger didn’t find her nearly as tedious. But if she made a predictable supermodel, now that she has recast herself she is fascinating – or does the fascination lie in Sarkozy’s unpresidential lust for her? For Bruni, like many physically perfect specimens, is really a trope. She has never said or done anything of particular interest, two rather good albums notwithstanding. It’s what she inspires others to do (including the father and son who dated her consecutively) that is gripping. I, for one, can’t wait to see what effect she has on other first ladies. She may lack Diana’s chaotic warmth, but she could have one hell of a wardrobe.
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