Françoise Hardy is the rare sort of singer songwriter and actress who transcends entertainment into our forever collective style memory. Born in Paris in 1944, she rose to fame in the 1960s for her yéyé music and inimitable sense of style. Namely, for wearing those iconic retro-futurist designers of the 1960s like Paco Rabanne and Courreges to name a few. Today, with the news of her passing, we’re looking back at Françoise Hardy, fashion icon.
Much like Jane Birkin, Françoise Hardy epitomized the easy, sleek bohemian look of French girl chic. For the most part, her aesthetic is simple and toned down, making the biggest statement through fashion that was categorically statement-making at the time. Think: thigh-high leather boots with a simple sweater dress, a silver gilded chainmail dress worn with no accessories, a tailored black short suit with a particularly 1960s shape paired with white heeled Go-go boots.
The secret to her style was choosing one strong statement piece and framing the rest of the outfit with simple, well-cut, classic pieces that were high-quality. The secret to her essence was having a definitive beauty look that was strikingly her own, with a little bit of je ne sais quoi. Long, thick hair messily brushed into a deep side part, the slightest black cat eye that’s been smudged and lived-in and little else.
Part of the reason why we still remember Françoise Hardy’s fashion decades later is because she took more risks that her peers at the time. Take, for instance, her Paco Rabanne square-tiled chainmail dress of 1968. It was made of 1,000 gold pieces, 300 carats of diamonds, and it weighed 20 pounds. It was also called the “world’s most expensive dress” at the time. She wore the tailored mini look before many of her peers and then swiftly shifted into Yves Saint Laurent’s Le Smoking era. And, maybe, no one ever looked better than she did in the classic Courreges jacket.
And as for her lasting influence? It’s been seen throughout the decades, on everyone from Alexa Chung to the runways at Chloé and Louis Vuitton. Those famous “Tous les garçons et les filles” lyrics inspired Rei Kawakubo to name her brand Comme des Garçons “If it weren’t for the way I dress, no one would notice me,” she famously a reporter in 1969.
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