Primrose Path Travelogue: Carla Bruni- The First Lady of France

Here at the Primrose Travelogue we salute Carla Bruni, the First Lady of France. Born 1967, and heiress to the Italian tire manufacturing company CEAT founded in the 1920s by her grandfather Virginio Bruni Tedeschi, she was born in Turin, Italy. The family moved to France in 1973, reportedly to escape the threat of kidnapping by the Red Brigades, a Marxist-Leninist terrorist group active in Italy in the 1970s. Carla grew up in France from five and attended boarding school in Switzerland. She returned to Paris to study art and architecture, but left school at 19 to become a model.

Bruni signed with City Models at 19. Paul Marciano, president and creative director of Guess? Inc., came across her picture among composite cards of aspiring models and chose her to model with Estelle Lefébure in campaigns for Guess? jeans. Bruni subsequently worked for designers and fashion houses such as Christian Dior, Paco Rabanne, Sonia Rykiel, Christian Lacroix, Karl Lagerfeld, John Galliano, Yves Saint-Laurent, Chanel and Versace.^[3] By the 1990s, Bruni was among the 20 highest-paid fashion models, earning $7.5 million a year. While modeling, Bruni dated Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger and Donald Trump.^[4] On Friday, 11 April 2008, it was confirmed that a 1993 nude photograph of Bruni had been auctioned for US$91,000 (£46,098) - more than 60 times the expected price

In 1997, Bruni quit the world of fashion to devote herself to music. She sent her lyrics to Julien Clerc in 1999, based on which he composed seven tracks on his 2000 album Si j'étais elle.

In 2002, her debut album Quelqu'un m'a dit, produced by ex-lover Louis Bertignac, was released in Europe with success in Francophone countries.^[6] Three songs from the album appear in Hans Canosa's 2005 American film Conversations with Other Women. The song "Le plus beau du quartier" was used in H&M's Christmas 2006 commercial.

In 2005, she was a guest in Louis Bertignac's return album on the song Les frôleuses which they sang as a duet.

In 2006, Bruni recorded "Those Little Things" an English-language translation of the Serge Gainsbourg song "Ces Petits Riens", for the tribute album Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited. She participated in the opening ceremony of the 2006 Winter Olympics in a parade paying tribute to the Italian flag.

Her second album, No Promises containing poems by Yeats, Emily Dickinson, Auden, Dorothy Parker, Walter de la Mare, and Christina Rosetti, set to music, was released in January 2007.

Her albums are released by the French independent record label Naïve, which releases artists such as Vinicius Cantuaria and Aline de Lima.

Her music career still did not cease after becoming the First Lady. She will release her third album "Comme si de rien n'était" (As if nothing happened) on July 21, 2008. The songs are self-penned except for one rendition of Bob Dylan's You belong to me and another song with poem of Michel Houellebecq set to music.

It has been claimed that Carla Bruni was involved with Louis Bertignac, Mick Jagger (Jagger's wife acknowledged his affair with Bruni was a reason for their separation), Eric Clapton, Donald Trump, Léos Carax, Charles Berling, Arno Klarsfeld, Vincent Perez^[10] and former French Prime Minister Laurent Fabius.

While living with Jean-Paul Enthoven, Bruni fell in love and started an affair with his son, philosophy professor Raphaël Enthoven (track 2, Raphäel, of Carla's album Quelqu'un m'a dit is named after him), who was at the time married to novelist Justine Lévy, daughter of philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy.^[13]

The affair and the ending of her marriage were inspiration for Justine Lévy's book Rien de grave (Nothing Serious), published in 2004. In it, Lévy paints a vitriolic portrait of "Paula", the female who steals the protagonist's husband, as "a praying mantis" with "a Terminator smile".^[14]

Bruni and Raphaël Enthoven had a son, Aurélien, in 2001.

At the end of 2007, Bruni was reported to be in a relationship with French president Nicolas Sarkozy ^[16] after photographers took pictures of them visiting Disneyland Resort Paris, as well as during a vacation in Luxor, Egypt and Petra, Jordan during the Christmas holidays.^[17] During a press conference at the Elysée Palace on January 8, 2008, President Sarkozy confirmed their relationship and hinted at a wedding.^[18]
They married on 2 February 2008 at the Élysée Palace in Paris. The marriage is Bruni's first and Sarkozy's third.