Mireille Darc is a typical brunette girl from Toulon. She became France’s most famous blonde not only because she was such a great actress, but also because in one of her early movies she wore the lowest-cut black dress possible. She was a French woman par excellence, as they say. Impossible to be more French. Here, our choice for Mireille is all-American girl Carolyn Murphy. Through the camera’s lens, she became the perfect vision of something totally French. Stephanie Seymour plays Nathalie Delon, who was married for a short time to France’s most famous actor, Alain Delon. (Mireille was his companion too, but for much longer.) Today we would call Nathalie an It girl, but that expression did not exist then. She was one of the French girls of the moment. I am not even sure she was born on the Continent. (Brigitte Bardot is another story. She was, in the late ’50s, a worldwide phenomenon who had invented a new type of free woman. Very French but in another way—and on another level.) But let us go back to that French mood that has disappeared forever and I am not sure would fit into the world of today. It was a style, an attitude, and an expression that related to the events of the ’60s and early ’70s in France. This is what makes it so special. So I liked Carine’s idea of making a very French story inspired by three very French women. I am not using the word “icons.” Nobody used that word back then. There is still something very modern about these three women. They are like an inexplicable, vital impulse from an irrational part of our perception of style and of women from another time. They were spontaneous and under no pressure of external necessity— something that is impossible today. That only existed during a short, carefree period from 1965 to 1975. It’s not our love of beauty alone that makes them stand out. It’s their “local universality,” if there can be such an expression. And that they were from France—a France that no longer exists.
143