LEADING LADY

Renowned for her effortless grace and strong sense of independence, Carla BruniSarkozy is proving to be a model first lady. We profile the woman who holds France – and the world – in her thrall.

WORDS BY PIERRE DE VILLIERS

IN A CROWDED MEDICAL CENTRE IN Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is making a difference. As journalists and photographers look on, the French First Lady meets women and children living with HIV, giving them a kiss and a hug.

“I want to help the weakest, the most vulnerable, those who are the first to fall victim to this disease,” explains Bruni-Sarkozy, who is visiting the West African country as an ambassador for The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

“The function of an ambassador can be handled in an abstract way where you’re not in contact with real people, but I have no wish to treat this role in a superficial manner. I don’t want to do it on the surface but in depth.”

Watching Bruni-Sarkozy reach out and touch lives, it’s easy to see why the French media have hailed her as “the new Princess Diana”. Warm, easy-going, approachable, the 41-year-old talks to people, not down to them. It’s not what you’d expect from someone who is an heiress, a former supermodel who dated Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, a successful recording artist and someone who is now married to French president Nicolas Sarkozy. But Carla Gilberta Bruni Tedeschi has always defied convention.

Born in Turin into wealth – her grandfather started tyre company CEAT – Bruni-Sarkozy was just five when her family, fearing a kidnapping by the Red Brigades, moved from Italy to France. Most children would find fleeing their home traumatic, but Bruni-Sarkozy rolled with the punches and became more resilient because of the experience.

“Every time I’ve had to make a big change, I have the memory of that move to Paris,” she told The Times newspaper. “I got used to change at an early age.”

Not only did Bruni-Sarkozy learn to deal with change, she started to enjoy the feeling of stepping into the unknown and fending for herself. At 19 she left the University of Paris, where she was studying architecture, to take up a modelling career.

“What I wanted was to be free, independent of my parents,” Bruni-Sarkozy revealed to Vanity Fair magazine. “I think it is a major duty for a woman to be independent. Independence was my obsession when I was 20. It was not making money – it was making my own money. Modelling meant I did not have to rely on my parents or a man.”

As a model Bruni-Sarkozy travelled the world, something, she says, that resulted in a reality check and helped to make her more grounded. “Modelling was very instructive, because it was made up of real life,” she told Vanity Fair. “You travel, you are always alone, and you better be well grounded, because it’s easy to lose yourself.”

She blossomed into a supermodel in the 1990s working alongside the likes of Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell, and became the face of Guess and Versace. At the age of 29, the Italian beauty was ready for a new challenge and quit modelling to concentrate on making a mark as a singer-songwriter.

Music surrounded Bruni-Sarkozy from a young age. Her mother, Marisa, was a concert pianist, while the man she long believed to be her father, Alberto (Bruni-Sarkozy found out in 1996 that her real father was Maurizio Remmert, a businessman her mother had had an affair with) was an opera composer. As a child she learned to play piano and guitar and started to compose songs.

Initially, Bruni-Sarkozy had little confidence in her voice and wrote for other artists instead. She released her own album Quelqu’un m’a dit (Somebody Told Me), which turned out to be a major hit. Two more albums followed – No Promises in 2006 and Comme si de rien n’etait (As If Nothing Had Happened) last year – containing songs with lyrics that are both playful and mournful.

“I’m sombre and rather playful myself. I delight in despair,” says Bruni-Sarkozy on her website. “I’ve been following the same thread since I started writing songs. When songs come to mind, I take care of their essence, I don’t dress them up.”

With Bruni-Sarkozy’s career as a singer-songwriter taking off, the media became increasingly interested in her life, and there was plenty for the tabloid newspapers to write about. Bruni-Sarkozy became involved with married philosophy professor Raphael Enthoven, who was several years her junior, and in 2001 they had a son, Aurelien.

“Before having Aurelien I was a bit of a tomboy, obsessed by doing things and travelling,” she told The Times. “My son slowed me down, because he is more important than me. For me, femininity means making room for a son or a husband, and I didn’t do much of that before.”

In November 2007, Bruni-Sarkozy met someone she would happily make room for in her life. At a soirée thrown by advertising mogul Jacques Seguela she was seated next to President Nicolas Sarkozy, who had recently divorced his second wife, Cecilia. With BruniSarkozy having split from Enthoven earlier that year, the two were the only singles at the party. It was love at first sight.

“I’m pretty bewitched by him,” she told The Times. “Plus I’ve always liked to talk with my friends or the few men I’ve loved, and with him it’s a conversation without end.”

Bruni-Sarkozy had found someone who, like herself, defied convention.

“My husband may represent a moderate right-wing party, but in no way is he a conservative,” she told Vogue. “If he were, he wouldn’t have married me. He’s a big change for France – he’s Jewish, Hungarian, Greek, and he won the popular vote in a country where people like their leaders to be called de Gaulle.”

After getting married in February 2008 Bruni-Sarkozy had to feel her way into the role of First Lady. She had to find the right balance between speaking her mind and doing what is expected as the wife of the most powerful man in France.

“I didn’t censor myself,” she pointed out to Vogue. “But I bowed to their customs, and I did something tiny but fundamental. I tried to understand the workings of the political milieu I had come into, its laws, its codes, its protocol – about which I knew nothing.”

Few could argue that Bruni-Sarkozy is a hugely impressive First Lady. Blessed with an effortless grace and a sense of style that has made her a fashion icon the world over, the former model lights up any political event she attends. Few politicians’ wives can charm the Queen of Great Britain around the same time that a nude photo from her modelling days is being sold at auction.

Not content with being just a pretty face, Bruni-Sarkozy has effectively used her celebrity to promote causes close to her heart. She has set up a new foundation to raise money to help the homeless, prison inmates, the handicapped and fight illiteracy in France, while there is also the hugely valuable work that she does through The Global Fund.

“The Global Fund’s activities are not very widely reported in the media so in that way I can bring my own celebrity to the cause,” explains Bruni-Sarkozy, whose own brother, Virginio, died of Aids in 2006. “I hope I can help The Global Fund to obtain additional funding and increase its visibility.”

And while some celebrities support causes without actually going out and meeting people, Bruni-Sarkozy promises to be different and take a hands-on approach to her charity work.

“The Global Fund gives me the opportunity to be useful worldwide,” she emphasises, walking around the medical centre in Ouagadougou. “This commitment is an honour, an opportunity to give to others.”

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