{"id":5169,"date":"2026-01-09T02:27:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T10:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markcomedia.co.uk\/?p=5169"},"modified":"2026-01-09T02:27:00","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T10:27:00","slug":"the-heady-rebellious-style-of-brigitte-bardot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markcomedia.co.uk\/?p=5169","title":{"rendered":"The Heady, Rebellious Style of Brigitte Bardot"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot was born in 1934 in the seizi\u00e8me<\/em>, in Paris, not too far from the Eiffel Tower. Her family was well-connected, straight-laced, and Catholic. Louis Bardot, her father, was a well-to-do businessman. Her mother, who had been a model known as \u201cToty,\u201d didn\u2019t much care for her daughters, Brigitte and her younger sister, Mijanou.<\/p>\n

One day, the two sisters were playing under the drawing room table and managed to smash an antique Chinese vase on top of it. Bardot\u2019s cold and distant mother was incensed. From that day on, they were to address her by the formal vous<\/em>. \u201cIt was as if a wall, a barrier, had been erected,\u201d Bardot later recalled, \u201cthat closed off the warmth of my childhood.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bardot started life in the public eye as a ballet dancer, showing considerable promise. She modeled hats, and later dresses, for the magazines. And then, in August 1953 (through the machinations of her mother), she was the Elle<\/em> girl, photographed for their cover wearing a full-skirted dress (by the ready-to-wear brand Virginie) in pink and white gingham, which the French called toile de Vichy<\/em>. She had wrist-length white gloves and was carrying a large-brimmed straw hat and a basket purse of wicker. With her then brunette hair pulled back and her fresh-faced looks, which are just a little knowing, this cover was a sensation.<\/p>\n

Inside, the magazine showed her in full bella ragazza<\/em> style: close-fitting sweaters or crisp shirts with full skirts to mid-calf, or tapered cropped trousers, worn with ballet flats. Bardot herself ordered flat shoes from Rose Repetto.<\/p>\n

The filmmaker Marc All\u00e9gret, who had discovered Jean-Paul Belmondo, Mich\u00e8le Morgan, and Louis Jourdan, among others, saw Bardot\u2019s pictures. He sent his young prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Roger Vadim (the son of a white Russian \u00e9migr\u00e9) to see her. He was then 22 and he was bewitched. Her parents were horrified; in fact, Louis Bardot took a rifle to him. So they married in 1952, after she turned 18.<\/p>\n

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\"Image<\/picture><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n

Bardot and Roger Vadim in 1952.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Photo: Getty Images<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Bardot was initially cast in small roles (including as Dirk Bogarde\u2019s love interest in 1955\u2019s Doctor at Sea<\/em>, a hit in the United Kingdom), but it was in 1956 that Bardot starred in the Vadim film \u2026And God Created Woman<\/em> (Et Dieu… cr\u00e9a la femme<\/em>). In this she played, according to the film\u2019s hype, \u201ca demon-driven temptress\u2026 a young girl of today tormented by the desires that sweep her from a love she yearned for\u2026 set in the pagan paradise of the French Riviera.\u201d Incidentally, she had a tempestuous affair with her co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant during the making of the movie. (Divorce from Roger Vadim followed swiftly afterwards.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot was born in 1934 in the seizi\u00e8me, in Paris, not too far…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5170,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[235],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markcomedia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markcomedia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markcomedia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markcomedia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markcomedia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/markcomedia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markcomedia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markcomedia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markcomedia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markcomedia.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}