While French cinema had Brigitte Bardot, Gallic pop had Françoise Hardy. The two stars exuded a contrasting allure. If Bardot was all voluptuous glamour, Hardy was more gamine and enigmatic — Vogue called her the “anti-Bardot” and credited her with creating an ideal of beauty that changed the way teenagers wanted to look and “rendered the exaggerated femininity of the sex kitten old-fashioned”.
Both in their different ways came to epitomise an image of chic French womanhood that exerted an appeal far beyond the Francophone world, and Hardy went on to become an object of adoration to the biggest names in 1960s pop.
“I was passionately in love with her,” David Bowie said. “Every male in the world, and a number of females were, too.”