Brigitte Macron Talks Melania Trump and French Fashion, Says She Would Prefer Not to Look Like a “Flower Pot”
In a new interview, the French first lady discusses Melania Trump and French fashion.
After Emmanuel Macron was elected president of France last spring, renewed focus was cast on his relationship with his wife, Brigitte Macron, a former teacher 24 years his senior—who taught at a high school he attended. At the time, the president was quite vocal about the gendered double standard that made his relationship the topic of such discussion—“If I had been 20 years older, no one would have thought for a single second,” he told Le Parisien last year. (“Of course, we have breakfast together—me and my wrinkles, him with his youth—but it’s like that,” Brigitte told Elle in an interview last summer.)
Despite the intense scrutiny of the optics of their relationship early in his presidency, Brigitte Macron has been adamant that she is not simply an accessory to her husband’s tenure. She’s established herself as a social advocate, working in the arenas of education, physical handicaps, and sexual violence against young people: “The former French teacher would like to avoid appearing like a ‘flower pot,’ three steps behind her husband, during official ceremonies,” Le Monde described.
Donald Trump, Emmanuel Macron, Melania Trump, and Brigitte Macron.
There’s one other area on which Macron has focused her attention: school bullying, the cause célèbre of one Melania Trump. Macron has been photographed with Trump on numerous occasions, ostensibly cultivating a friendship with the American first lady. (At least, their relationship appears markedly less ambivalent than that of Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron on the heels of a recent state visit.) Macron pointed out the marked contrast between her own position and that of Melania Trump: “Melania can’t do anything—she can’t even open a window at the White House. She can’t step outside. Me, every day, I’m outside in Paris,” she said. “That is a woman who has so much character, but who hides it. She laughs easily, but she shows it less than me.” Still, when visiting the United States, Macron pointed out, she was obliged at times to similarly reduce herself: “I put myself where I had to put myself,” she said, according to Vanity Fair‘s translation of the interview.
And while Macron must have intended her “flower pot” remark to mean that she’s not just sitting idly by while her husband makes policy, it’s also true that she doesn’t want to physically resemble one, either. French first ladies are consistently reserved a place of honor at Paris Fashion Week’s marquee shows and dressed by French fashion’s most hallowed names—think, for example, of Carla Bruni (herself a former model) walking, and then attending, Chanel; Claude Pompidou, garnished in Courrèges and Pierre Cardin—and Macron is no exception. She’s appeared front row at Dior, and she name-drops the Louis Vuitton designer Nicolas Ghesquière—but, according to the new Le Monde interview, she’s turned down requests for a major Vogue interview, stating that she’s adamantly “not a model.” (She describes the couture dresses she frequently dons for official occasions as “skin” that “helps her face the daylight.” Meanwhile, her husband’s spending thousands of euros on his skincare regimen.)
Still, there are benefits to having the best of French fashion on speed dial: “I have no idea what to wear; Nicolas Ghesquière has made me a wardrobe for every circumstance. For Congress, he told me that black is the most adaptable.” And, you know, who ever heard of a flower pot in a black Louis Vuitton shift?
Brigitte Macron, Carla Bruni, and More: A Brief History of France’s First Ladies and Their Front-Row Affair with Fashion
First lady from 1969 until her husband’s death in 1974, Claude Pompidou—née Cahour—was instrumental in founding the Centre Georges Pompidou, the contemporary art museum in her husband’s name. A noted patron of the arts and avid fashion lover, she was also frequently spotted in the front row of shows like Chanel (pictured here, Spring 1979, with Bernadette Chirac, wife of then-Paris major Jacques Chirac) and palling around with designer Karl Lagerfeld.
In addition to her public support of the arts and fashion, Pompidou also experimented with her own looks, favoring ensembles by the likes of avant-garde designer Courrèges and Pierre Cardin and opting for then-scandalous pantsuits.
In addition to her devotion to fashion, Pompidou was also an art aficionado. She redecorated the Élysée Palace with contemporary, of-the-moment pieces; she and her husband regularly visited local galleries; and, a fan of the artist Yves Klein, she was also instrumental in negotiating the look of the Centre Georges Pompidou, which opened after her husband’s death.
Pompidou and Chirac, who would eventually become first lady herself, were frequently spotted at Chanel shows together—as here, at Fall 1985—up until Pompidou’s death in 2007.
Following Pompidou, Anne-Aymone Giscard D’Estaing, wife of president Valéry Giscard D’Estaing (1974-1981) picked up the mantle of fashion’s first lady. Though never as much of an insider as her predecessor—and far less the art fan, as she and her husband dismantled much of the Élysée Palace’s contemporary décor—she nevertheless frequented Givenchy shows. Here, she’s pictured with the designer Hubert de Givenchy himself, September 1997.
Though designer Jean-Louis Scherrer’s label has since closed up shop, it was a favorite of French politicians throughout the late 20th century; here, Giscard D’Estaing poses with the designer and his daughter, November 2005.
President from 1981 to 1995, François Mitterrand was the longest-serving president in French history. His wife, Danielle Mitterrand, focused primarily on human rights issues, pushing the role of first lady beyond its traditionally domestic bounds—yet she was no less chic for it, befriending designers like Yves Saint Laurent, pictured here in 1992.
Each first lady seems to have favored a particular French fashion legend—and for Mitterrand, that legend was Yves Saint Laurent. Here, she sits front-row at the label’s Spring 1986 couture show.
And while for Mitterrand, fashion week was less of a pressing concern than for predecessors like Claude Pompidou, she still frequently attended the most exclusive shows. Here, she embraces Pierre Bergé, business and romantic partner of Yves Saint Laurent, before the label’s Fall 1992 show.
After cutting her teeth in the front row as the first lady of Paris (her husband Jacques was the mayor for nearly 20 years, from 1977 to 1995), Bernadette Chirac ascended to first lady of France when Jacques was elected president in 1995. He was succeeded by Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007. From Dior to Chanel to Yves Saint Laurent, Chirac took in everything, with friend Claude Pompidou by her side. Here, Chirac is pictured with designer Yves Saint Laurent at the designer’s Musée des Arts de la Mode restrospective in Paris, May 1986.
As recently as Spring 2013, Chirac has been spotted in the front row, still posing with designer Karl Lagerfeld as if it’s 1985 all over again.
Cécilia Sarkozy married French president Nicolas Sarkozy in 1996; they divorced, causing quite the scandal in France, in 2007. (Sarkozy remarried, to the supermodel and singer Carla Bruni, the following year.) But despite her short reign as France’s first lady, Sarkozy nevertheless found a place in fashion; here, she’s front row with the late designer Sonia Rykiel at the Yves Saint Laurent Fall 1993 show.
After divorcing Cécilia, Nicolas Sarkozy remarried, wedding Carla Bruni, the French-Italian supermodel and singer who had walked many of the same runways at which she’d later sit front row. Here, she walks Chanel Spring 1989 during Paris Fashion Week, October 1988. (She didn’t marry Sarkozy until 2008.)
Bruni’s eye for fashion was among the most remarked of recent first ladies; arriving in London for a state dinner, she wore a Dior ensemble complete with a pillbox hat that, at the time, many noted for looking like a contemporary update on the Jackie Kennedy image of a first lady.
And, of course, the selfies—here, with Karlie Kloss, September 2016.
Though she never married president François Hollande, who presided over France from 2012 to 2017, Valérie Trierweiler nevertheless took up the front-row place of honor occupied by most first ladies. Here, she appears with designer Raf Simons, then of Dior, at the Dior Spring 2014 show.
Trierweiler and Hollande split in early 2014; later that year, she was nevertheless spotted at all the major shows, including Dior’s Fall 2014 couture show, here, where she sat alongside the Arnaults and actress Isabelle Huppert.
Incoming first lady Brigitte Trogneux, wife of president-elect Emmanuel Macron, already has the requisite front-row credibility befitting a first lady. Here, she sits front-row at Dior’s Fall 2015 couture show.
Trogneux is nearly 30 years Macron’s elder; as has been amply reported, she was a teacher at his high school and advised him on a play when he was a young drama student. They married in 2007; she’s still a teacher, albeit one who also lands coveted spots at fashion week—here, alongside actress Léa Seydoux at the Louis Vuitton Fall 2016 show.
