What a scandal! Cecilia Sarkozy, the wife of the new French President, and her husband have been seen shopping in a Prada store on Avenue Montaigne. Italian brands for the French First Family? What is next, driving a BMW? The global mega-fashion brands, Prada and Gucci, count among Mrs. Sarkozy’s favorite fashion brands. And she must know, having worked as a fashion model during her law studies.
The real scandal, though, is that a nation eager for scandals (“Quel scandale” is a favorite headline on tabloids) and quite nationalistic on top of it (“La Grande Nation”) does not seem to care much. Are we witnessing the making of a global nation – shopping for global brands – right before our eyes?
Being the resident French guy on the fifth floor, Schmitt invited me to comment on this post. I think he expects a controversial comment so I won't disappoint him.
Interestingly, I could hardly find any mention of this "scandal" on French blogs. The one article that I found was more impressed by the price of the Prada dress that Cecilia wore at her husband's nomination ceremony (1,435 euros) than by its country of origin.
I think that this "scandal" is a good example of how the outside world likes to reinforce an image of France that is not as accurate as it may have been in the past. It would indeed be interesting if the French had been outraged by their first lady wearing an Italian dress, but the truth is that most of the people who noticed actually mainly thought that the dress was tasteful.
I was in France during the presidential elections and it was interesting to see how the US media were giving the impression that the election was all about Segolene Royal's bikini and people burning cars. Booh, those remote froggies who only care about sex and violence... Guess what, people in France didn't care about Segolene's bikini as much as you might think. Search for "segolene royal bikini" on Google Trends (http://www.google.com/trends?q=segolene+royal+bikini), and you'll see that the city from which the most searches were made on this phrase is... New York! To be fair, a lot of these probably came from our colleague Jonathan Levav.
Posted by: Olivier Toubia | June 04, 2007 at 11:20 AM
Being ze second French (temporary resident) on ze fifth floor, I feel zat it iz my duty to justify ze first lady's choice:
First, Gucci is now a French brand, belonging to French multibillionnaire Francois Pinault and hiz retail group PPR.
Second, Prada is an Italian, and zerefore a European group.
And zus third, ze tastes of Cecilia are of ze utmost modernity and chic, being half-French and half-European!
(sorry for ze accent, I should change my keyboard)
Vive la Haute couture!
Vive la France!
Posted by: Fabrice Pombet | June 07, 2007 at 01:18 AM
What is it about Americans and teeth?
Posted by: Nicholas Cullum | July 16, 2007 at 06:26 PM