Breakfast with Brigitte

On screen, she was a French cocktail of kittenish charm and continental sensuality. One publication called her “the princess of pout and the countess of come hither”; it was an image she grew to loathe.

Brigitte Bardot was a one off, an individual so significant to the French economy that President Charles de Gaulle famously described her as “the French export as important as Renault cars”. Her tousled “choucroute” hair, heavy black eyeliner, gingham prints, and ballet flats redefined glamour as something natural and accessible rather than stiff and manufactured.

Ruthlessly marketed as a hedonistic sex symbol, Bardot was frustrated in her ambition to become a serious actress. In 1973, she abandoned her film career to campaign for animal welfare. In a troubled end to a troubled life, Bardot’s political opinions meant she spent her final years as a semi-recluse fighting race-hate allegations in the courts.

We need not dwell on that aspect of her life – let us celebrate her as a true icon, a person who to this day continues to be a major influence on style.

Our five segments in oil run like a scene from one of her classic French features from the fifties. Having spent the night with a gentleman, the lady is in need of replenishment and nicotine.

“Breakfast? What a marvelous idea – I’m famished!”