It is with great sadness that we heard about Françoise Hardy’s death on the 11th of June 2024 aged 80. I wanted to create this newsletter both as a hommage to the wonderful person of Françoise Hardy as well as the beautiful heritage that she has left France and the world.

A modest childhood for a modest personality

Françoise Hardy was born in 1944 in the difficult context of the Second World War in Paris. She grew up in a modest apartment with her mother and younger sister with whom she was very close. She was a shy, well behaved and studious girl who went on to study German at the famous Sorbonne university. At the age of 16 she was given a guitar as a present for her Baccalaureate diploma. This began her love affair with music and in her free time she composed her own tunes with inspired lyrics while playing the guitar and humming melodies.

During the early 60s many open auditions took place with aspiring young singers performing in front of artistic directors or sound engineers. At the time she had apparently heard Johnny Halliday’s first song on the radio (at that time an aspiring singer and musician himself) and thought it sounded so bad that she figured the music label Disques Vogue he was signed with, must be fairly easy to get a contract with. So… she took a leap of faith and auditioned for them. Jacques Wolfson, then the director of Disques Vogue, was charmed by Françoise Hardy’s simplicity and the smoothness of her voice and signed a contract with her. At the young age of 17, Wolfson made her sing her first single in a “tiny cramped room with just me and my guitar”, she later mentioned in an interview. “As the editor, he (Wolfson) had mistakingly received the lyrics of an American song, and after hearing my voice he thought to himself, voilà she’s the (French) interpreter we need for this song. Due to this, that song figured on my first 45rpm record. A great 45rpm with 4 songs!” said Hardy.

Her music:

I created a playlist with a selection of Françoise Hardy’s songs, in chronological order of their release dates, for you to listen to while you read the newsletter if you’d like to really be immersed in her world. Just click here.

How one song changed her life…

“Tous les Garçons et les Filles”

While the production company was mainly betting on the cover of the American song “Oh Oh Chéri”, the public unexpectedly fell under the spell of the melancholic ballad “Tous les Garçons et les Filles” written and composed by Françoise herself… This happened by chance thanks to her song being broadcasted on the famous TV show “Le Petit Conservatoire de la Chanson” right after the diffusion of an important national referendum on that same day. The show was therefore watched by millions of French spectators who discovered her for the first time and were instantly charmed by the softness of her song. A star was born overnight in France…

Her melancholic hit song “Tous les Garçons et les Filles” is about a young woman who observes loving couples of the same age around her while she walks alone in the streets of Paris and wonders if she’ll ever find true love. This song rang true for thousands of young people across the globe who could relate to the feeling of loneliness and being left out in a time when there was a lots of questioning about the concept of love and its meaning.

The song was such a success with more than 500 000 copies sold in only a few months that Françoise decided to stop her studies and put all her focus into her music carrer. She sang it not only in French but also in English, Italian and German under the title “Peter Und Lou”. This process almost instantly launched her into international stardom and one of the most famous French singers in Europe. The journalist Philip Sweeney remembers the single of “Tous les Garçons et les Filles” played on a jukebox in a small cafe in provincial Great Britain “This goes to show how fast her music circulated in the world and how big of an impact it had” he says.

During her whole life her first hit “Tous les Garçons et Les Filles”, from her first album remained her most played and diffused song! She later on mentioned being disappointed about it on the TV show Du côté de chez Fred in 1989 saying “I’ve done many better quality songs since… I know that one (song) had a certain freshness and spontaneity to it but musically I find it bad”.

“A time for love”

After her first huge success, she kept going and came back the same year with a second international hit that made everyone dance and blossom with love. While her first song was about the loneliness of a young woman longing for love, in the second song she seems to have found the love she was longing for and sings its praises in “Le Temps de l’Amour” celebrating the joy of being young (20 years old) and in love. A love that makes us forget our wounds and allows us to fully enjoy the present moment, having fun with friends and being adventurous. Here’s the chorus:

With these two hit songs, Françoise Hardy had almost immediately reached the status of being a French icon and symbol worldwide. She continued composing sweet, soft and touching songs throughout het life.

From casual style to being Paco Rabanne’s muse

Just as was the case with her personality, Françoise’s style started off very modest with jeans, jumpers, and basic tops.

Her boyfriend of the time Jean Marie Périer, who was a photographer and the son of two famous French actors, advised her on what to wear, how to pose and hold herself to have more of that “star aura”. With his help, along with her personal sense of style, she became interested in 60s style trends and started adding glamorous and fashionable items to her staple clothes. These included items such as leather jackets, fur coats, big sunglasses, fancy belts, hats, ruffled collars, mini skirts and suits. She included these in her outfits whilst always managing to keep her aura of effortless simplicity. She had the art of perfectly pairing masculine chic with feminine softness, modern avant-garde items with traditional basics.

Francoise was often seen with a leather jacket or emblematic full leather outfit with an undeniably rock and modern flair for the time!

She jokingly mentioned in an interview in 1968 that “The only reason I wore mini skirts was because I was tall. If I had been small maybe I’d have worn longer skirts because the mini skirts would have been considered maxi skirts on me”.

Her dazzling collaboration with Paco Rabanne

We cannot talk about Françoise Hardy without mentioning her iconic collaboration with Paco Rabanne and her role as both muse and most famous ambassador for his brand.

They started working together in the 60s when she was introduced to him through her boyfriend Jean Marie Périer, due to a request by the French women’s magazine ELLE. The idea was for Francoise to wear avant-garde, slightly rebellious and very modern designs as an inspiring figure of daring youth.

From then on she became the muse of Paco Rabanne with him designing countless metal, plastic and leather geometric cut-out dresses and skirts that he literally built both for her and literally on her like a sculptor.

She famously asked him in 1968 to create a jumpsuit for her. At the time he was working mainly with steel wire frames and responded to her request by saying that it would be “a bit heavy”. Françoise’s response was “try anyway!” He accepted the challenge and ingeniously created the jacket and trousers as one unique piece in the same steel frame. She wore the jumpsuit for publicity photos in a rose garden as well as during a live concert in London. This was because the English “always loved and were excited about seeing extravagant outfits”, mentioned Hardy in an interview. The jumpsuit, although absolutely beautiful and special, was very unpractical due to its extravagant weight of 16kg!! She laughingly said that whilst wearing it she “could go down the stairs but not up, and could hardly walk”. But it was worth it for the impact it had, showing her as a true fashion icon!

Paco Rabanne told Françoise Hardy: “I like metal on you, I think you wear it well and yet it’s not easy to wear because it’s a very hard material. To wear it you have to be very modern, I think you are… There is something in you that personifies the modern woman’s character.”

“The most expensive dress in the world”

In 1968 Rabanne designed a made to measure dress for Hardy labelled the “most expensive dress in the world”. She wore it on the red carpet in Paris. This jewellery dress was made of gold plates encrusted with diamonds, requiring no less than 2000 hours of work and weighing 38kg!!! If anyone could pull it off and bear the weight so elegantly it was definitely Françoise Hardy. On her slender body with her long legs, and worn with matching gold ballerines, the mini dress was a sensation and completely diverged with anything anyone had ever seen or worn before. The dresses’ glamour and exuberance contrasted with Hardy’s modest and frank personality, but surprisingly these opposing factors perfectly complimented each other and the result was a winning combo!

Overall Françoise Hardy is remembered as a very talented young woman who always kept her integrity and her ‘feet on the ground’, even when she reached stardom. A woman who, although naturally shy and mild tempered, was not scared to believe in herself and take chances by experimenting with her music, singing or her fashion style. She was always trying to improve herself. Star of the “Yéyé” movement, she touched many with her melancholic and vibrant songs as well as her kindness, audacity, and honesty. Françoise Hardy is a true French icon and always will be!

Best wishes to you all,

Jamila Wilson Xx