Our Muse: Brigitte Bardot
Brigitte Bardot is an icon of 60’s style. Graceful and feminine, her style endures, 60 years on.
In And God Created Woman, set in St Tropez, Bardot burst on to the international screen.
With sun-kissed hair and skin, Bardot had a new and unique look that could best be described as ‘natural’ and a little unfinished. Her hair was tousled and not ‘done’ (“set” as had been the fashion before her) and she was often bare foot or in ballet flats.
Bardot was her authentic self in all its uniqueness, bringing something completely new and refreshing to the cinema screen. Bardot entered our collaborative consciousness as a completely new representation of what it means to be a woman - a new archetype, ignoring and defying tradition and convention. The French philosopher and writer, Simone de Beauvoir wrote (in an article about Brigitte Bardot in 1959) that Bardot “turns her nose up at elegant clothes, jewels, girdles, perfumes, make-up, at all artifice”.
With her long mane of tousled hair and her lithe ballet trained form, Bardot was feminine, without being fragile, she embodied both femininity and strength. Her strength emanates from the physicality of her classical ballet training and from within, from her personality. Bardot rarely played the traditional 'damsel in distress'. Instead she fought where she needed to, in Shalako (1968) and even in the comedic western Les Pétroleuses (1971) - (see banner image) where the assured Bardot leads a band of outlaws, ready to take on the world!
Bardot had an ability to enjoy the moment, a love of nature and animals and a healthy lack of respect for conventions and ‘rules’ for rules’ sake. Her unfinished appearance implied an absent-mindedness that was both refreshing and endearing, showing her thoughts were elsewhere than on her appearance. And her devotion to her causes, shows this to be true. She famously joined the Sea Shepherd in 1977 on the icefloes off the East Coast of Canada to bring attention to the slaughter of baby whitecoat seals for their fur.
Bardot’s enduring charm springs from this lack of vanity together with an air of indifference to what others think. Her style, without artifice and over-complication gives a freedom, both from the constraints of uncomfortable clothes …and expresses a healthy indifference of up-to-the minute trends.
This indifference now beats as the heart of French style, known as “insouciance” it is what attracts women of all cultures to French style.… a style embodied by Brigitte Bardot.