Brigitte Bardot as a bohemian trendsetter
Okay, if you’re less than 100 years old, you may not know her, but believe me: Brigitte Bardot is an icon. A beauty icon, a sexual icon, a fashion icon and of course, a French Icon.
Last week during Paris Fashion Week the French paid tribute to their icon by celebrating the first major exhibition of her life and work, and there’s a lot to see.
Brigitte Bardot is one of the most photographed woman of all time, along with Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana. Roger Vadim gave her the most explicit movie title a woman can dream about: AND GOD CREATED WOMAN. Global warming is nothing compared to the 1956 heat wave she started. Yes, she was the French Marilyn, but she was also an early adopter, as she wore the hot-purple sweater with stockings in 1958 and Monroe did it only in 1960. In 1973, she committed a different kind of suicide: she suddenly broke all her relationships with the movie business and became this ferocious pro-animal activist, a kind of FREE WILLY Diana. Who knows what kind of hysterical activist Marilyn would have become? Bardot chose cats, dogs, and seals.
But for me, watching the life and career of Bardot in this exhibition, I suddenly understood what a trendsetter she was. She has simply and naturally checked off every fashion statement. The return of the Vichy, check. The ethnic bohemian bag, check. The leather waders every woman wants this winter, (thanks to the genius Serge Gainsbourg and the “Harley Davidson” song he wrote for her) check. The Amy Winehouse eyeliner and the girlie headband, check. Even the bohemian way of life and the dirty-hair/boots look, check (sorry, Kate Moss and John Galliano).
Bardot in fashion-forward makeup and headband
Bardot in stockings and sweater, before Marilyn Monroe
The exhibition is a paradise for the fetishists: the suspenders she wore in Louis Malle’s VIVA MARIA, the furniture she tangled with as she raised her dress (with nothing under it!) in front of an aging Jean Gabin in LOVE IS MY PROFESSION, the freedom Marianne chest sculpture that was in every French City Hall in 1969 (Freedom and Big Boobs, this is France in all her glory).
Yes, Bardot is an icon. And we don’t care if she’s now a kind of cuckoo granny talking about a lot of subjects she’s not supposed to talk about in the media. Bardot is Bardot and she has never been anything else. Vadim said, “She never acted. She was. And she never did a scene more than twice.” Maybe that’s why she didn’t come out the other night in Paris (when the entire country was waiting for her). Young diva one day, old diva the next.
Iconic Bardot as a magazine superstar
Bardot Links
The famous mambo scene, sexual revolution from AND GOD CREATED WOMAN:
The famous opening of Godard’s LE MÉPRIS (the legendary Bardot sequence starts at 1:57):
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Clip of Bardot doing Gainsbourg’s “Harley Davidson” song (starts at 1:59):
