France, 1962. A young and very small singer – still unknown to most – animates the break of an election live broadcast by singing a future hit entitled All boys and girls. She is beautiful, beautiful; with that mannequin body, that soapy makeup and that perpetually messy bangs giving her an exquisitely French allure. She is Françoise Hardy and together with his music he will become a legend; the symbol of an entire generation of young yé-yé girls who will look to her both for her role as ambassador of French song and for that of style icon of the Sixties.
The emblem of a new fashion which, abandoning affectations and baroqueness, gives jolie madame of the previous decade, will begin to become simple, without frills and above all democratic. In August 1963 Helmut Newton crystallized it on the cover of Vogue; a striped sweater, a graphic look underlined by eyeliner and a discreet charm that will enchant everyone, from Bob Dylan to Mick Jagger, via David Bowie. And some of the shots that have brought her (also) to the history of costume are mythological; in trench coat and lunettes geometric, in dress boho and pearl necklace, in a vinyl and metallic coat on an optical background as per the fashion of the Sixties.
Françoise Hardy in London, 1968, wearing a metallic jumpsuit by Paco Rabanne
History of the Golden Dress by Françoise Hardy
Nevertheless It is with one stylist above all others that Françoise Hardy has a relationship from the annals of style; an experimenter, a non-conformist, of those who, in defiance of the detractors who defined him as “metallurgical”, created models that were like weapons which, if closed, gave “the impression of hearing the trigger of a revolver”, as he said Paco Rabanne on those futuristic clothes made of rhodoid. A material that looked like metal but wasn’t and that captured everyone with its light; William Klein who was inspired by the Spanish designer’s metallic effects for his Are you here, Polly Maggoo?but also Jane Fonda and hers Barbarellaand even Givenchy loyalist Audrey Hepburn who in Two for the road showed off a hooped dress made with the bizarre “fabric”. And she attracted above all Françoise Hardythe anti BB with a velvety voice and rock charm like those reef Anglo-Saxons who inspired his music, and who dressed Rabanne seamlessly. With tracksuits, A-line dresses, coats.
With Paco Rabanne and Salvador Dalì.
Heroin Space Age in white or silvery plates that the fashion metallurgist dared to dress – even – with A-shaped armor as precious as a jewel. Because in the shots that populate our feeds at the moment, it’s impossible not to come across the curious one that sees Hardy in metal mesh by Rabanne on an armored truck, escorted by two armed guards who don’t lose sight of her. It was May 15, 1968 and Paris was preparing to host the first International Diamond Fair organized by the jeweler Arnaud Clerc. For the occasion, Paco Rabanne dressed Françoise Hardy in one of her iconic metallic dresses. But it wasn’t just any dress, and that rhodoid was too shiny to really be rhodoid. It was gold, in fact. Nothing but a mini dress made up of 1000 gold plaques attached to each other, with a collar made sparkling by 300 carats of diamonds. Total weight? 38 kilos, so much so did she have to support (or endure) a beautiful François Hardy on the journey that took her, in ’68, to that Place de l’Opéra where she was immediately photographed by the lens of her then beloved Jean-Marie Périer. It was the contribution of Rabanne and his muse to the Parisian fair that gave us, among other things, unforgettable images such as the one portraying the singer-songwriter between the stylist, Amanda Lear and Salvador Dalí, another great supporter of metallic and of its inventor, acclaimed as the “second genius of Spain”, naturally after him.
AND the story of the most expensive dress in the world, conceived from nine kilos of gold and sported by an eternally young and eternally chic diva. François Hardy left us yesterday at the age of eighty and yet her charm – androgynous but feminine, rebellious and very French – will survive her. As they say from the Rabanne maison in these hours: “Forever an icon. Forever our muse. Forever Françoise”.
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