“If it weren’t for the way I dress, no one would notice me,” Françoise Hardy told a reporter in 1969. This throwaway moment of absurdité belies the impact the melancholic, yet exquisite singer had not just on fashion, but culture. Rei Kawakubo borrowed one of the chanteuse’s “Tous les garçons et les filles” lyrics to christen her brand, Comme des Garçons; Bob Dylan wrote poetry for her; Malcolm McLaren remembered her as “the ultimate pin-up [on] most hip, Chelsea, beat bedroom walls”; and Mick Jagger crowned her his “ideal woman”. Scores of women, such as Alexa Chung, looked to Hardy and her cat-eye flicks as the definition of French-girl beauty, while designers, from André Courrèges to Nicolas Ghesquière, declared her not just a chic clothes horse, but “the very essence of French style”.
The songwriter had the Midas touch. Paco Rabanne’s silver paillettes sky-rocketed to popularity after the Vogue Records pin-up, who was the face of Paris’s yéyé (pop) genre, wore his dresses, including one weighing 20 pounds and crafted from 1,000 gold plaques, during performances. As an Yves Saint Laurent muse, Hardy was one of the original Le Smoking influencers, championing slick tailoring deemed androgynous in comparison to the miniskirts of the ’60s. But she similarly made bright white Courrèges separates–which she told Elle France made her “look like an alien”–her calling card. On Françoise, nothing–even her signature go-go boots–looked calculated or contrived. Her choppy fringe and mussed-up hair gave her an effortlessly gamine, rather than girly, air, which subsequently caught the attention of film directors curious about this “anti-Bardot” character.