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 visiting friends and clients including their neighbor, novelist Robin Moore at Blue Lagoon. There <mask> met Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza who asked <mask> to curate part of his art collection. For five years many classic works of the baron's international art acquisitions decorated the walls of the <mask>' home. Von Thyssen also granted <mask>' children access to his private island at San San near Port Antonio. In 1955 <mask> had just returned from sailing the Robanne to Havana when he met Adlai Stevenson who had given a speech honoring a visit to Jamaica by Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon. At the gallery Stevenson fell in love with <mask>' George III period Sheraton bow-fronted desk, immediately purchasing it for his own office in Chicago. Over dinner, <mask> shared his observations of simmering revolution in Cuba, while he and Stevenson compared their concepts of justice, democracy, conflict and dictatorships — a conversation that inspired <mask> to publish his ideas for uplifting the world's underprivileged masses in his landmark volume Rise of the Phoenix.Rastafari movement

<mask> also became an advocate for Jamaica's Rastafari movement, who were being oppressed in the late fifties. He gave Rastafarians jobs as woodcarvers, free paints to poor artists, such as the now-famed Ras Dizzy and bailed them out of Spanish Town Prison while encouraging rasta brethren to sustain themselves through art and music. <mask> and Norah <mask> were personally thanked for their years of support for struggling rastas by Mortimo Planno, the Rasta teacher of Bob Marley and one of the few Rastafarian elders to have met with Emperor Haile

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 Selassie in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. <mask> also "reasoned" Gandhian nonviolence with Leonard Howell, the original "Gong" activist who founded Pinnacle, a Rastafarian community farm at Sligoville, a few miles from <mask>' home. In 1958 Pinnacle was raided in a brutal crackdown by the authorities, ostensibly for growing marijuana, but in fact Rastafari at that time was regarded by The Crown as a threat to social harmony. <mask> interceded with the Prime Minister but, with an election coming, law and order politics prevailed and many sustainable farming families had to leave the land. For his support, <mask> was given the moniker "The First White Rasta".Unlike his skeptical friends and business colleagues, he saw Rastafarian spirituality as a righteous way of life, indeed growing out his hair and beard in solidarity and also in keeping with his emerging interest in the sadhus and enlightened sages of India who had much in common with the vegetarian mystical Rastafarians. Spiritual awakening
By 1960 <mask> had accumulated a large metaphysical library on frequent trips to Samuel Weiser Books in New York, while writing his own books, Kingdom of Desire, Power of the Doctrine and The Power of Increased Perception. At 30 he retired from business and began to research multiple spiritual paths and the physics of what Albert Einstein called Unified field theory. Prolific research papers and lectures came out of <mask>' laboratory in the Blue Mountains (Jamaica) on subjects such as bioenergetics, hypnosis, tele-thought, biophysics, effects of solar radiation on living organisms, resonant systems of ionosphere, and capacitor effects of human body on static

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 electricity and electron discharge of the nervous system. In 1960 he began a 30-year project to document the effects of sound and color on human consciousness and states of health. Global outreach

With Norah <mask> running the galleries, <mask> set forth on a two-year journey travelling in Asia, Europe, Pakistan and India, meeting with members of the UN and calling on politicians, scientists and religious leaders. UNESCO hired him to shoot 1,000 photographs of their projects in faraway countries, which appeared in an exhibit at United Nations headquarters.<mask>' global odyssey's itinerary grew out of publishing his views on conflict resolution and alternative government in a manifesto, Framework for Unity, that was circulated to The Commission for Research in the Creative Faculties of Man, a network he had founded of thinkers around the world which, in 1961, included Prof. Oliver Reiser, Humphry Osmond, Dr. Andrija Puharich, David Ben-Gurion, and Lady Isobel Cripps, among its 500 members. After teaming up with his good friend and noted lawyer Luis Kutner (co-founder of Amnesty International), <mask> decided to search the world for a spot to establish a Center where a dedicated community could live and test his World Constitution for Self-Government by Nature's Laws, which he published in a book with an introduction by Bertrand Russell. Friendship with Nehru

Working his way on a speaking tour through Europe in the direction of India, <mask> decided to make a precarious expedition to the remote Himalayan Hunza Valley where he had long been curious about the diet and extraordinary longevity of the Pashtun, Balti and Uzbek hill tribes. In

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texts: Pakistan, <mask> was the guest of Professors Duranni and Walid Uddin at Peshawar's College of Engineering. Visiting Sufi holy men and Islamic scholars in Karachi, he met Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to discuss possible Indo-Pakistan cooperation in algae cultivation in the climatically suitable Gujrat-Sind border region, which is where Bhutto and his ancestors were from. Later, when Bhutto was overthrown in a military coup, <mask> orchestrated urgent appeals to General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq for clemency, but, like many westerners protesting Bhutto's imprisonment, was ignored, and Bhutto was hanged. In the 1950s <mask> became known to Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru through his friend the Deputy leader of India's Congress Party, Surendra Mohan Ghose, a Bengali revolutionary and relative of Sri Aurobindo.<mask> invited Ghose to Jamaica, to speak at the 1961 Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference, and together they formed a partnership to promote World Union and global famine relief through algae aquaculture. S.M. Ghose was one of the founders of Auroville, an experimental sustainable-living International Village in Tamil Nadu. In 1962 Ghose took <mask> to Sri Aurobindo Ashram for a personal audience with Aurobindo's successor, spiritual head of the ashram, Mirra Alfassa, known as "The Mother". Later Ghose arranged for <mask>' son, <mask>, to give the keynote address at the World Parliament of Youth in Puducherry in 1971. In 1959 <mask> had lobbied Nehru to approve a government in exile for the Dalai Lama fleeing persecution in Tibet and to grant full refugee status to exiled Tibetans. He had become connected to the Tibetans through his study of

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 Buddhism and in 1960 provided funding for the Young Lama's Home School in Dalhousie, Himachal Pradesh founded by his English friend Freda Bedi, one of Gandhi's handpicked satyagrahis who became Gelongma Karma Kechog Palmo, the first Western woman to take ordination in Tibetan Buddhism.Freda Bedi is the mother of film and television star Kabir Bedi. In 1968 <mask> contributed to Freda Bedi's building of the Karma Drubgyu Thargay Ling nunnery at Tilokpur in the Kangra Valley and helped organize her journey to the West with the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje in 1974. When <mask> arrived in India, he found Nehru besieged by border disputes with China and discussion inevitably turned to <mask>' theories of conflict resolution and how to avoid war. Their connection also evolved out of the fact that India was experiencing famine in some states. With dependence on wheat shipments from the United States, <mask> helped lobby President Lyndon Johnson for an increase in wheat aid, which was granted. But when <mask> mentioned his research with algae as a food source, then Nehru became interested and offered to support cultivation in India. (PDF will be posted)

While in New Delhi, <mask> spent time with the prime minister at Teen Murti Bhavan, enjoying Jawaharlal Nehru's rose gardens and meeting his daughter Indira Gandhi.<mask> was the guest of Indian industrialist G.D. Birla, where on his first day in India, he had met Swami Shantananda, an enlightened sage and a remarkably politically connected guru with whom <mask> would travel throughout India for two years, much like a roaming sanyassin. On one of his "pilgrimages", <mask> was taken by

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texts: Shantanananda and Nehru's Parliamentary Secretary S.D. Upadhyaya to Brindavan for a private audience with India's highest female yogini Sri Anandamayi Ma, from whom he felt a "genuine sublime holiness" and received one of the most significant blessings in his life. In Patna, Bihar, <mask>, along with Dr Raynor Johnson, were the only Europeans to attend the 1961 Science & Spirituality Conference, where seeds were sown for <mask>' decade of cooperation with hundreds of Indian scientists and yogis, many of whom eventually journeyed to visit Hills' centers in the West and who comprised many of the delegates for a 1970 Yoga conference <mask> staged in New Delhi. In 1963, the Sri Aurobindo Ashram and Gandhi Peace Foundation sponsored another conference in Patna, hosted by Dr. Rajendra Prasad, Mahatma Gandhi's longtime right-hand disciple and first President of India. Prasad was supposed to speak at the conference but became ill, and <mask>' guru Shantananda was leading prayers for him every day at the Sadaqat Ashram in Patna. Prasad requested to meet <mask>, whose goals for World Union he had heard about from Nehru.<mask> considered Prasad the most spiritual of the founders of Independent India, and their meeting was a profound encounter in which Prasad gave his blessing for <mask>' global endeavors, but then the president lost consciousness, tightly holding onto <mask>' hand. Apparently Prasad never recovered, and at the time, there was a controversy that the man who, through satyagraha, had resisted multiple British governments and Viceroys and been jailed by them for so many years, had said his last words to an Englishman. Microalgae

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 International
In earlier travels from Jamaica to Japan, <mask> had formed an aquaculture research company with his friend and colleague, biologist Dr Hiroshi Nakamura, Dean of Tokyo Women's University. Dr Nakamura was a noted scientist and a colleague of Emperor Hirohito (himself a marine biologist) who asked Nakamura to research alternative food sources for Japan after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had devastated food supplies. The goal of Hills and Nakmura's organization Microalgae International Union, was to develop strains of algae as a way of harnessing the sun's energy for biofuels and human nutrition and as a solution to World Hunger. Presented with M.I.U. 's feasibility studies, Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru endorsed <mask>' proposal for bringing the cultivation of protein-rich Chlorella algae to the villages of India.With India's Home Minister, Gulzari Lal Nanda, <mask> had co-founded the Institute of Psychic and Spiritual Research in New Delhi. A devout Gandhian, Nanda feared social upheaval and possible communal violence if poor and hungry villagers started migrating to India's cities so he threw his support behind <mask>' plan for developing rural economies via small footprint aquaculture that could help villages become sustainable. A detailed plan for a pilot project in the Rann of Kutch was approved by the Indian government. However, the initiative became mired in bureaucracy when Nehru died in 1964. Nanda became acting prime minister but only until the new Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri was nominated to succeed Nehru. Shastri continued working with <mask> and had his staff prepare a budget request for


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 Parliament to fund the chlorella algae project. However, because it competed with traditional agricultural interests, the aquaculture project became victim to political jockeying as well as an outbreak of war with Pakistan.With Shastri's mysterious death at the 1966 India-Pakistan peace conference in Tashkent, the project lost its key sponsor. Nevertheless, the networks <mask> had established with the founders of modern India proved valuable when his son, <mask>, was introduced by Nanda and S.M. Ghose to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who helped the younger <mask> garner support among India's Congress party and religious leaders for India's largest conference of Western scientists and Indian yogis. Centre House, London

Three years after Jamaica's 1962 declaration of Independence from Britain, the <mask> family moved to London, at the suggestion of two of his mentors, Bertrand Russell and Sir George Trevelyan, 4th Baronet. They helped <mask> find and purchase a six-story Edwardian building in London's leafy Kensington. There <mask> and others, including Kevin Kingsland, founded Centre House, a self-discovery and human-potential community known as a nucleus of yoga and spirituality in the emerging New Age movement throughout the late sixties and seventies. Seekers came from all over the world to study with visiting gurus, such as Swami Satchidananda, Muktananda, B.K.S.Iyengar, Sangharakshita and John G. Bennett as well as Sanskrit scholar Dr. Rammurti Mishra, Christmas Humphreys, Tibetan lamas, chief Druids, homeopathic  doctors and scientists studying meditation, telepathy and neuroplasticity in Hills' Yoga Science laboratory. It was here

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 <mask> wrote his magnum opus, Nuclear Evolution – recognized as a definitive treatise on the chakras as they relate to the human endocrine system, light frequencies and human personality. Yoga Journal described the book as, "Synthesizing a vast amount of information ranging from the structure of DNA to the metaphysics of consciousness" and also as, "A giant step forward in integrating science with religion in a meaningful way." Centre House was an experiment in group consciousness where the majority of residents were well-educated students, teachers and scientists interested in the convergence of science and spirituality. For a while the large basement kitchen was a macrobiotic restaurant, first run by Craig Sams, then called Gandalf's Garden which counted John Lennon amongst its health-conscious patrons. Its founder, Muz Murray (Ramana Baba), was one of the early residents of Centre House and there published the first issues of Gandalf's Garden magazine, a publication chronicling the vitality of London's New Age scene. Kevin Kingsland went on to found the Centre for Human Communication in Devon and Grael Associates (a Community Company)..

World Conference on Scientific Yoga, New Delhi

In December 1970 <mask>, his son John, and Kevin Kingsland organized the world's first World Conference on Scientific Yoga (WCSY) in New Delhi, bringing 50 Western scientists together with 800 of India's leading swamis, yogis and lamas to discuss their research and establish a network for the creation of a World Yoga University.The conference generated some controversy when Indian politics intersected with religion, particularly the concept of Christ Yoga,

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texts: a book <mask> had written linking Christ's teachings to those of Buddha and the Vedas. But the conclave nevertheless emerged as a milestone in the soon-to-be-booming migration of Indian yogis to the West. <mask>, helped by his father's prior relationship with Nehru, worked with India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the Nehrus' yoga master Dhirendra Brahmachari to steer a fractious committee of MPs, ministers and often competitive spiritual leaders from disparate religions and castes into creating a uniquely diverse and widely hailed program of events. Presenters from the West included transpersonal psychology pioneer Dr. Stanislav Grof and Dr. Sidney Jourard who compared their research in lively sessions with Indian scholars, scientists, philosophers and yogis such as B.K.S. Iyengar, Shri K. Pattabhi Jois, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Swami Satchidananda, Padma Bhushan Murugappa Channaveerappa Modi, R.R. Diwaker, Swami Rama, Acharya Dharma Deva Vidya Martand, Kaivalyadhama Health and Yoga Research Center and yoga hospital founder Dr. G. S. Melkote, M.P. The actor James Coburn, a yoga and martial arts practitioner, described the World Conference on Scientific Yoga as "Very rewarding for me, definitely worth the time and money getting here."During the conference, Dhirendra Brahmachari presided over the wedding of organizer Kevin Kingsland and yoga teacher Venika Mehra. James Coburn also attended. Kevin and Venika Kingsland went on to establish various Centres for Human Communication in the UK, USA and India, teaching yoga, human communication and promoting community consciousness. Post-conference, the select delegates' presentations were published

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 in CHAKRA magazine, founded with the help of Tantra scholar Ajit Mookerjee and Indian art patron Virendra Kumar and edited by <mask> whose first venture in publishing was mentored by Baburao Patel M.P., editor of Filmindia and Mother India magazines. The conference was deemed a success and <mask> was elected by a majority of the delegates to establish a World Yoga University somewhere on the planet. A mission that would take him from the United Kingdom to the United States. University of the Trees

As the spiritual axis shifted to America, <mask> visited his friend Laura Huxley who urged him to move to the United States where he settled in Boulder Creek, California, and became a U.S. citizen.There, amidst the ancient redwoods, he founded in 1973, an accredited college, University of the Trees, an alternative education and research center for the social sciences to study the laws of nature and their relation to human consciousness. Students lived on campus and studied subjects as diverse as Radionics and dowsing (<mask> was a well-known diviner), meditation, hatha yoga, the Vedas, and early forms of social networking he called "Group Consciousness". The campus housed University of the Trees Press which published <mask>' writings and the research of a number of resident students who obtained degrees at the university and wrote books on light & color frequencies and the science of Radionics. A small workshop produced pendulums for dowsing and a line of negative ion generators. With the buildup of the vitamin business surrounding discoveries that spirulina had significant weight loss benefits University of the Trees became one of the largest

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 employers in the San Lorenzo Valley and leased more than 10 buildings in Boulder Creek for housing students and warehousing for Light Force, a burgeoning nutritional products brand based on spirulina. From this base in California, <mask> extended his hospitality to a pantheon of visiting scientists, writers, philosophers and scholars such as Alan Watts, Edgar Mitchell, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Allen Ginsberg, Thelma Moss, Hiroshi Motoyama, Haridas Chaudhuri, Sri Lanka president Ranasinghe Premadasa, Menninger Foundation's Swami Rama, Dr. Evarts G. Loomis, Viktoras Kulvinskas, Max Lüscher, Marcia Moore, Bernard Jensen and countless others in the fields of human potential, holistic health, aquaculture, religion, quantum physics and alternative medicine. Supersensonics
Within the campus, <mask> founded an experimental laboratory, managed by physicist Dr. Robert Massy, to develop his theories on the Electro Vibratory Body – documenting what Hills' colleague Stanford University's William A. Tiller Ph.D, calls "subtle energies" or "psychoenergetics".Shortly before he died radionics pioneer George de la Warr donated a substantial portion of his research files, library and instruments to <mask>. In 1975 <mask> wrote the book Supersensonics: The Science of Radiational Paraphysics, widely considered "The Bible of dowsing" The book sheds new light on divining, telepathy, The I Ching, Egypt's Pyramids, Biblical miracles and discusses the value of low level extrasensory phenomena vs higher levels of insight, wisdom and consciousness. New Age Journal magazine called Supersensonics "A short course in miracles for scientist and seeker alike." International

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 philanthropy
With the Cold War in full swing liberation from the evils of totalitarianism was a constant theme in <mask> writings. He lobbied hard against the KGB's persecution of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and the internal exile with police surveillance of Andrei Sakharov and the denial of an exit visa for Natan Sharansky's emigration to Israel. <mask>' lifelong crusade against dictatorships and Man's inhumanity was manifested in the book Rise of the Phoenix while his passionate beliefs against deficit spending were set forth in a book on the global economy—The Golden Egg. A recurring theme throughout all <mask>' approaches to world, local and family problems was a process he developed called "Creative Conflict"—the same principles of solving differences between individuals, political parties and even nations that <mask> had debated with Adlai Stevenson, Nehru and Luis Kutner.Throughout the seventies and eighties <mask> focused on international affairs, particularly the emergence of democracy in the Soviet Republics, eventually traveling to Russia to meet with Mikhail Gorbachev where he joined the Soviet Peace Committee. U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush bestowed awards on <mask> for his commitment to democratic freedom and his humanitarian support for victims of oppression. The Christopher Hills Foundation donated more than $9 million worth of spirulina products to charitable organizations in the U.S. and abroad. When the Soviet Union had occupied Afghanistan, <mask> learned from his friends in Peshawar that Afghan freedom fighter Ahmad Shah Masoud's mujahadeen troops as well as Tajik and Pashtun tribals were starving

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 because supply routes had been cut by Russian forces. <mask> donated and shipped $300,000 worth of spirulina, which was packed in by mules with help from Senator Charlie Wilson to sustain the Afghans. In 1989 Sri Lanka president Ranasinghe Premadasa, struggling to find a formula to end the Sri Lankan Civil War, traveled to Boulder Creek to meet with <mask> and learn more about his conflict resolution concepts. The two men shared a spiritual connection and established a close friendship.Premadasa then brought the Ceylon conflict closer to a democratic solution than any other Sri Lankan president had. However, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam hierarchy had split and in 1993 a faction assassinated Premadasa in a suicide bombing that killed 23 people. Spirulina: food from sunlight
<mask> and Nakamura had a vision of feeding the world from lakes, seas and backyard aquaculture and in 1975 they authored a book, Food from Sunlight which published all their proprietary research as open source for the world to use in the cause against global famine and malnutrition. Their company, Microalgae International, invested in research and technology to find a super food for solving World Hunger. Early research focused on chlorella but its cellular structure was too small to be collected without expensive centrifuges. However, in 1967, while Dr Nakamura was living at Centre House, they discovered that women at Lake Chad were harvesting an algae in baskets to make dihé, a highly nutritious sun-baked biscuit. After studying the lakes of Africa, <mask> and Dr Nakamura developed seed culture for a strain of 70% protein algae called spirulina that they had

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texts: collected from Lake Aranguachi in Ethiopia.Later, in 1981, Dr <mask> made an expedition to Lake Chiltu at the invitation of Mr. Wollie Chekal, Minister of Trade for the Ethiopian Revolutionary Government and brought back a new set of spirulina samples to his California laboratory for hybridizing an optimal strain for commercial cultivation. For millennia spirulina had been a food staple for natives of Lake Chad and also for the Aztecs but <mask> funded much of the early experimentation needed for its successful modern day mass cultivation, described in Dr Nakamura's book Spirulina: Food for a Hungry World. To manufacture spirulina nutritional products <mask> started the Light Force company in Santa Cruz, California, which was one of the early models for multi-level marketing. Customers began reporting weight loss and health benefits from spirulina and the success story was featured in The National Enquirer. Sales skyrocketed into the millions of dollars propelling Light Force to 50,000 distributors worldwide. To grow that much spirulina Hills formed joint ventures with Koor Foods in Eilat, Israel, Taiwan Aqua in Taipei and Sosa Texcoco at Lake Texcoco in Mexico. Hills also had an association with Cyanotech on the Big Island of Hawaii which grew a very pure Pacifica brand of spirulina.By 1995 more than 5,000 tons of spirulina a year were being imported for Light Force products. To encourage domestic research and production Hills purchased a 150-acre farm and built raceway ponds filled from the land's own natural geothermal aquifer in Desert Hot Springs, California. Professor Nakamura's student and protégé Dr Kotaro Kawaguchi relocated from

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 Japan as chief research scientist and working with Sebastian Thomas, an algae cultivation expert from India, they refined desert-grown spirulina into consumable powder using the world's first  solar heated dryer. While a staff of 40 ran the Southern California "Green Gold Farms," harvesting its own U.S.-grown spirulina for Light Force, Hills built a  home/laboratory on a mountain in the redwoods of Boulder Creek, California, dedicated to researching neutraceuticals and as a gathering place for scientists, innovators and spiritual "map makers". Three years after moving to the new home Norah <mask> died from Alzheimers eliciting an outpouring of affection from the many who had seen her as the "divine mother" and a significant force in all that <mask> had achieved. Santa Cruz sanctuary

At the property he built a Hollywood quality video production studio to produce films on Enlightenment and, through new media, to inspire people to celebrate what he called the "Divine Goddess". The studio is run today by his second wife, artist/producer Penny Slinger <mask>.In 1996, after three decades of globetrotting, <mask> visited Vietnam to invest in a naturally carbonated underground spring water venture. He contracted an obscure virus which caused a deterioration of his health. Light Force and the research company Biogenics were sold to Royal Body Care which continued to market the products. <mask> died at home January 31, 1997 leaving his wife Penny Slinger <mask>, two sons, <mask> and <mask> and four grandchildren. He believed that "Algae biomass was God's way of providing an inexhaustible source of energy from the sun". Today millions of health

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 conscious people enjoy the health benefits of spirulina in myriad products worldwide. Recent innovations have moved algae to the front burner as researchers recognize its efficiency as a carbon sequestration mechanism and alternative biofuel.<mask>' legacy of bio-innovation and commitment to hunger relief is being carried forward by the Christopher Hills Foundation. Bibliography

<mask> wrote over 30 books. The following are a selection of his works:

The Power of Increased Perception—Philosophical Library New York, 1958
Kingdom of Desire—Philosophical Library New York, 1959
Supersenonics—The Science of Radiational Paraphysics,  (1975)
Nuclear Evolution: Discovery of the Rainbow Body (2nd ed. ),  (1977) (hardcover)
Food from Sunlight—Planetary Survival for Hungry People,  (1978)
Rise of the Phoenix—Universal Government by Nature's Laws,  (1979)
The Golden Egg,  (1979)
Creative Conflict—The Secret to Heart-to-Heart Communication,  (1980)
The Christ Book,  (1982)
Spirulina—Food for a Hungry World,  (1982)
Instruments of Knowing—Human Biological Sensitivity,  (1985)
The Book of Vision,   (1995)

Christopher Hills Foundation is a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to empowerment of rural economies and feeding the world's hungry. References

External links

 Penny Slinger
 John Hills
 Christopher Hills Foundation

British male writers
20th-century British businesspeople
British philanthropists
Consciousness researchers and theorists
New Age writers
Philanthropists from California
University and college founders
1926 births
1997 deaths
Algaculture
Arts in Jamaica
Businesspeople from California
English emigrants to the United States
Rastafari
People

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texts: <mask> (; born 17 January 1944) is a French singer and songwriter. Mainly known for singing melancholic sentimental ballads, <mask> has been an important figure in French pop music since her debut, spanning a career of more than fifty years with over thirty studio albums released. She rose to prominence in the early 1960s as a leading figure of the yé-yé wave, a genre of pop music and associated youth culture phenomenon that adapted to French the pop and rock styles that came from the United States and the United Kingdom. The singer differentiated herself from her peers by writing her own material, a rare feat in an industry dominated by older, male composers and producers. France's most exportable female singer of the era, <mask> rose to international fame and released music sung in English, Italian and German, in addition to her native French. She also landed roles as a supporting actress in the films Château en Suède, Une balle au cœur and the American big-budget production Grand Prix, although she never pursued a serious acting career. In the mid-1960s, she also established herself as a pop and fashion icon with the aid of photographer Jean-Marie Périer, becoming a muse for top designers such as André Courrèges, Yves Saint Laurent and Paco Rabanne.In the English-speaking world, her trendy public image and personal style led her to become an icon for the Swinging London scene, and attracted the admiration of several famous artists. Long after the height of her career in the 1960s, <mask> remains one of the best-selling singers in French history, and continues to be regarded as an iconic and influential figure in both music and fashion.

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texts: Her work has appeared on several critics' lists. Born and raised in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, <mask> had a troubled childhood marked by the strict upbringing of her single mother and a largely absent father. As a teenager, she discovered English-language rock and roll performers including Elvis Presley and Brill Building pop acts such as Paul Anka through the radio, and decided to pursue a singing career. <mask> made her musical debut in 1962 on French label Disques Vogue and found immediate success through the hit song "Tous les garçons et les filles", which remains one of her most popular compositions. Disliking the production of her early releases, she began to record in London in 1964, which allowed her to broaden her sound with albums such as Mon amie la rose, L'amitié, La maison où j'ai grandi and Ma jeunesse fout le camp....In the late 1960s and early 1970s, <mask> sought to assert herself as an artist, although this implied less commercial repercussion. The albums Comment te dire adieu, La question and Message personnel—released during this period—are among her most influential and critically acclaimed works. In them, <mask> began to work with more renowned songwriters such as Serge Gainsbourg, Patrick Modiano, Michel Berger and Catherine Lara. Between 1977 and 1988, she worked with producer Gabriel Yared in a string of successful albums, including Star, Musique saoûle, Gin Tonic and À suivre. Her 1988 record Décalages was widely publicized as <mask>'s final album, although she returned eight years later with Le danger, which completely reinvented her sound to a harsher alternative rock. Her following albums of the

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 2000s—Clair-obscur, Tant de belles choses and (Parenthèses...)—saw a return to her mellow style. As a public figure, <mask> is known for her shyness, disenchantment with celebrity life and self-deprecatory attitude—attributed to  her lifelong struggles with anxiety and insecurity.In addition to music, <mask> has developed a renowned career as an astrologer, having written extensively on the subject since the 1970s as a proponent of the "conditionalist" school of thought—outlined by Jean-Pierre Nicola—which rejects the divinatory use of the discipline. Since the 2000s, she has also worked as a writer of both fiction and non-fiction books, including a bestselling autobiography and two essays. Through these works, <mask> has been noted for her frankness in discussing her family life and health problems related to MALT lymphoma and old age, as well as her sometimes controversial political ideas. In 2006, she was awarded the Grande médaille de la chanson française honorary award given by the Académie française, in recognition of her career in music. In the 2010s, <mask> released her last three albums: La pluie sans parapluie, L'amour fou—released alongside her eponymous first novel in celebration of the 50th anniversary of her music career—and Personne d'autre—which brought her out of a previously declared retirement. She has been married to fellow French singer-songwriter Jacques Dutronc since 1981 and their only son, Thomas, is also a musician. In 2021, <mask> announced that her health had worsened and that she would not be able to sing again owing to the effects of cancer therapy.Early life

<mask> <mask> was born on 17 January 1944 at the

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Madeleine Hardy


title: Françoise Hardy

texts: Marie-Louise Clinic in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, in Nazi-occupied France during World War II. At the time of her birth, there was an air raid alert in place, with the windows of the clinic "exploding". She has related being born during this violent context with the "abnormally anxious temperament" that she developed as an adult. Her mother <mask>, who came from an ordinary background, raised Françoise and her younger sister Michèle—born eighteen months after her—as a single parent. Her father Étienne Dillard—a married man that came from a much wealthier family—did little to help them financially and was largely an absent figure in their upbringing, only visiting the children a couple of times a year. <mask> raised her daughters strictly, in a modest apartment on the 9th arrondissement's Rue d'Aumale street. <mask> had an unhappy and troubled childhood, and mainly engaged in solitary activities like reading, playing with dolls or listening to the radio.At the insistence of their father, the girls went to a Catholic school called Institution La Bruyère, under the tutelage of Trinitarian nuns. The gap of social origin between <mask> and her classmates was a source of permanent humiliation for her. She recalled in her autobiography: "This is most likely where the feeling of shame that has tormented me non-stop since I was a child took root. Everything fell into place: the social status of my parents who I naively believed were divorced, (...) the good sisters' constant complaints that my father was generally a year behind in his payments, and the various differences with the other girls." Her lifelong insecurities were also fuelled by

masks:
Madeleine Hardy
Madeleine Hardy
Hardy
Hardy


title: Françoise Hardy

texts: her regular visits to her maternal grandmother in Aulnay-sous-Bois, who "told [her] repeatedly that [she] was unattractive and a very bad person". Between 1952 and 1960, <mask> and her sister were sent every summer to Austria to learn German, encouraged by her mother's new lover, an Austrian baron. As her father played piano, <mask> was encouraged to receive piano lessons as a very young child, from which she quickly dropped out after experiencing stage fright when she was supposed to display her talents onstage at the Salle Gaveau.A disciplined student, <mask> skipped two years of secondary education and passed her baccalauréat in 1960 at age sixteen. To mark the occasion, her father asked her what gift she would like and she chose a guitar, with which she began to sing her own melodies. Following her mother's orders, she enrolled in the Paris Institute of Political Studies while still a teenager. Considering it too challenging, she quickly left the institution and joined the Sorbonne to study German. <mask> used the time left from her courses to devote herself to composing songs on her guitar. She began to test her repertoire on the small stage of venue Moka Club, also known as Club des mordus, where she performed every Thursday "in front of an audience of retirees". Around this time, she auditioned for record label Pathé-Marconi after reading an ad in France-Soir.Although she was rejected, <mask> was impressed that she had held the directors' attention for longer than she expected. She also felt encouraged after hearing her recorded voice, which she found "less off-key and tremulous than [she] feared". The aspiring singer then went to


title: Françoise Hardy

texts:
 Philips Records, where she was recommended to take singing lessons. Following this advice, <mask> joined Le Petit Conservatoire de la chanson in 1961, a school for radio performers—the first of its kind in France—led by singer Mireille Hartuch. Originally launched as a radio program in 1955, the Petit Conservatoire was turned into a popular TV show beginning in June 1960. When a student gave a satisfactory performance, they were given the chance to release it on the radio, or even perform it again for television. Hartuch—who was known to be very selective—accepted <mask> right away, recalling in 1966: "The first time Françoise entered the classroom to audition, I didn't know if she sang, if she played guitar, what she was doing, I just looked and felt like there was a spark, something that lit up."They developed a "mother-daughter relationship" and a long friendship based on mutual esteem. Music career

1961–1963: Career breakthrough

On 14 May 1961, <mask> auditioned for the French label Disques Vogue, where was received by directors Serge Goron and Léo Vidaly, who recommended that she take music theory and harmony lessons with a pianist. Her good looks impressed Vogue sound engineer André Bernot—feeling that she "would make a nice record cover"—who offered to teach her some rudiments of music theory in order to improve her sense of rhythm. Bernot later recorded a four-track demo with her, which he submitted to Jacques Wolfsohn, the most influential director at Vogue. At that time, Wolfsohn was looking for a female singer to record "Oh oh chéri", a French-language version of Bobby Lee Trammell's song "Uh Oh". After an audition in

masks: Hardy Hardy Hardy


title: Françoise Hardy

texts: person, Wolfsohn immediately offered her a one-year contract, which she signed on 14 November 1961. Upon learning of <mask>'s new record deal, Mireille Hartuch presented her student at the Petit Conservatoire TV show on 6 February 1962, in what has been described as "one of the most popular French TV extracts of all time".In a much remembered exchange, the hostess asked the young singer what the English-language "yeah! yeah!" in her lyrics meant, after she performed "La fille avec toi" on her guitar. The transliteration "yé-yé" was later popularized by sociologist Edgar Morin through an article published in Le Monde on 7 July 1963, in which he analyzed the burgeoning youth-led pop music scene. The yé-yé phenomenon was spearheaded by the massively popular radio program Salut les copains—created by Daniel Filipacchi—and a successful magazine of the same name. Recorded in the spring, Vogue released her first extended play in May 1962, which included "Oh oh chéri" along with her own compositions "Il est parti un jour", "J'suis d'accord" and the sentimental ballad "Tous les garçons et les filles", which despite her wishes was relegated as a B-side because the label deemed it too melancholic for young audiences. On 5 June 1962, the singer proudly shared the record sleeve at the Petit Conservatoire.In early October, <mask> filmed a black-and-white music video for "Tous les garçons et les filles" directed by Pierre Badel, which aired on TV show Toute la chanson. The song was chosen at the initiative of <mask> and the show's producer André Salvet, despite Wolfsohn's reluctance to promote it. <mask> was introduced to the large majority of French

masks: Hardy Hardy Hardy Hardy


title: Françoise Hardy

texts: people on the evening of 28 October 1962, when the clip was rebroadcast during an interlude of the televised results of the presidential election referendum. The exposure propelled the song to widespread popularity among young people—particularly teenage girls—aided by the wide airplay it received by radio stations, starting with youth-favorite Europe n° 1. "Tous les garçons et les filles" was further popularized by a Scopitone music video directed by Claude Lelouch, which shows the singer in an amusement ride alongside two girls whose skirts are lifted up by the wind. Building on the momentum generated by the song's success, Vogue released two more EPs almost simultaneously, which were later compiled along with the first one in a debut studio album commonly known as Tous les garçons et les filles. In France, the LP format was initially viewed with skepticism, so <mask>'s first series of albums were compilations of previously released four-track, 7-inch records, a format that was known as "super 45 [rpm]".Most of her full-length records were released without a title and bearing only her name on the cover, coming to be referred to by the title of their most popular song. Her debut studio album was soon awarded the Trophée de la Télévision, as well as the prestigious Grand Prix du Disque award given by the Académie Charles Cros. She later stated: "It would have made me even more happy if I had received it a little later for records better made than this." On 11 May 1962, <mask> made her debut as a live performer alongside other young singers at the Disco Revue gala in Nancy. She performed on Christmas Eve in Brussels and underwent a

masks: Hardy Hardy


title: Françoise Hardy

texts: successful tour in Southern France from late 1962 to early 1963. By early 1963, 500,000 copies of "Tous les garçons et les filles" had been sold in France, which rose to two and a half million in the following months. Between late 1962 and early 1963, <mask>'s singles "J'suis daccord", "Le temps de l'amour" and "Tous les garçons et les filles" topped the French singles' chart.In January 1963, she graced the cover of Paris Match in a special article devoted to the "new millionaires of song" and she signed a new five-year contract with Vogue, as well as an agreement with Editions Musicales Alpha, created by Wolfsohn. In February 1963, <mask> appeared on TV show Cinq colonnes à la une alongside Sylvie Vartan and Sheila; they would go on to be considered the three biggest idols of the yé-yé era, each one embodying a different modern girl archetype. On the third of that month, she made her first performance at the prestigious Olympia concert venue in Paris, where she opened for Richard Anthony. Between 26 February and 10 April, <mask> took part in the Gala des Stars concert tour sponsored by Europe n° 1 and Salut les copains, to great success. Between two of the tour's dates, she represented Monaco at the Eurovision Song Contest in London, singing ""; she finished joint fifth with 25 points, level with France's Alain Barrière. "" reached no. 5 in the French charts in June 1963.In October, <mask> released her second studio album Le premier bonheur du jour. That month, she received the "Youth" Edison Award at the Grand Gala du Disque in Scheveningen, Netherlands. She was handed the trophy by author Godfried Bomans, who praised her as a "creative


title: Françoise Hardy

texts:
 artist" that knew how to impose "a personal style without trying to imitate the Americans". Between 7 November and 18 December 1963, <mask> once again performed as Anthony's opening act at the Olympia and was well received by the press, who had hitherto criticized her stiff live performances. As a leading figure of the yé-yé craze, <mask> found herself at the forefront of the French music scene and became the country's most exportable female singer. Beginning in 1963, translated re-recordings of "Tous les garçons et les filles" began to be exported to Italian, German and English-speaking markets. The first foreign-language country where the singer found success was Italy, where the song became "Quelli della mia età" and sold 255,000 copies, topping the singles' chart between April and October and dropping to second place between July and August, behind Rita Pavone's "Cuore".At the end of the summer, she recorded new songs in Milan, which were included in the Italian release <mask> <mask> canta per voi in italiano. The single "L'età dell'amore" / "E all'amore che penso" also topped the Italian charts. On 11 October, <mask> performed in Barcelona, Spain, as part of the fourth Great Gala of the Sedería Española. In November 1963, she embarked on her first Italian tour, which mostly visited small coastal towns. The singer was also successful in Portugal and travelled to Lisbon in late 1963 to appear in several TV shows. 1964–1968: International stardom

At the peak of the British Invasion phenomenon, <mask> sought to modernize her music, opting to leave the poor quality of French studios and sound engineers to go record her songs at Pye

masks: Hardy Hardy Françoise Hardy Hardy Hardy


title: Françoise Hardy

texts: Records' studios in London. Working with producer Tony Hatch in February 1964, she recorded an EP that included a cover of "Catch a Falling Star" and three adaptations of her hits: "Find Me a Boy" ("Tous les garçons et les filles"), "Only Friends" ("Ton meilleur ami") and "I Wish It Were Me" ("J'aurais voulu").On 21 February, she promoted "Catch a Falling Star" on TV show Ready Steady Go! English audiences initially preferred her recordings in French, with "Tous les garçons et les filles" entering the UK Singles Chart on 1 July 1964 at number thirty-six. Her 1965 English-language single "All Over the World" was a substantial hit in the United Kingdom, reaching the Top 20 and staying in the charts for fifteen weeks. It was also successful in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, probably being her most popular recording among English-speaking audiences. She promoted the song with performances on the British TV shows Ready Steady Go!, Ollie and Fred's Five O'Clock Club, Thank Your Lucky Stars and Top of the Pops. In 1965, <mask> flew to New York City to sign a record deal with Kapp, allowing them to distribute her records in the United States. The label released her debut studio album under the title The "Yeh-Yeh" Girl From Paris!, as well as the single "However Much"—an English-language version of the previously released track "Et même...".While in the United States, <mask> made her first appearance in American television in NBC's program Hullabaloo, where she performed "However Much", a bilingual version of Charles Trenet's "Que reste-t-il de nos amours ?" and a rendition of "The Girl from Ipanema". The singer became famous overnight


title: Françoise Hardy

texts: in Germany after her 28 April 1965 appearance on TV show Portrait in Musik, in a series of staged musical performances directed by Truck Branss. Shortly after, the album In Deutschland was released, which, in addition to containing translated versions of her previous songs, included five original compositions. Her most popular track in Germany was "Frag' den Abendwind", which remained in the national singles' chart for twenty-four weeks. Pressured by her French and Italian record companies, <mask> took part in the Sanremo Music Festival 1966, where she reached the finals with the Edoardo Vianello-penned song "Parlami di te". On 12 April 1966, <mask> was among the forty-six performers that took part in the famous group photograph shot by Jean-Marie Périer for Salut Les Copains, which became a symbol of the yé-yé era and came to be known in France as the "photo of the century" (French: "photo du siècle").Beginning in late 1967, <mask> began to release her records under her own production company Asparagus, although Vogue continued to distribute them. She later regretted this decision, recalling in 1999: "Wolfsohn had sensed that the singers were going to want to be more and more independent. So it was he himself who suggested that I create a production house. At first I was very seduced, then I realized that it was a trap: the CEO of Vogue, Léon Cabat, was also in this production company and, between them, owned the majority of the shares. This has given rise to a lot of harassment, lawsuits." Her seventh French studio album Ma jeunesse fout le camp...—the first one produced under Asparagus—was released in November 1967. <mask> gave her


title: Françoise Hardy

texts:
 last three live performances in Kinshasa, Congo during June 1967.On the advice of English producer Noel Rodgers, <mask> recorded her second English-language album in the spring of 1968, known variously as En anglais, The Second English Album, Will You Love Me Tomorrow and Loving, depending on the country. 1969–1976: Transition to artistic maturity

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, <mask> sought to assert herself as an artist, although this implied less commercial repercussion than that which she had achieved with Disques Vogue. In 1970, the singer definitively broke up with the label and signed a three-year contract with Sonopresse, a subsidiary of Hachette. She also created a new production company—called Hypopotam—and founded her own music publishing company—Kundalini. <mask> received high advances from Sonopresse, which allowed her to finance her own projects. She has described this period as "the happiest time", as she was now able to work independently on her music endeavours. This transitional period in her career was kicked off by the 1970 publication of several compilation albums—including the French release Françoise—as well as the studio albums One-Nine-Seven-Zero—recorded in English—and Träume, her last German-language release.Her first French studio album produced under Hypopotam was Soleil, released in the spring of 1970. It featured a wide array of arrangers, including Bernard Estardy, Jean-Claude Vannier, Jean-Pierre Sabar, Mick Jones, Saint-Preux, Simon Napier-Bell and Tommy Brown from Nero and the Gladiators. In the summer of 1970, <mask> released her penultimate Italian-language single "Lungo il mare", written by


title: Françoise Hardy

texts: Giuseppe Torrebruno, Luigi Albertelli and Donato Renzetti. Neither this one nor the next Italian single—which included translated versions of "Soleil" ("Sole ti amo") and "Le crabe" ("Il granchio")—obtained success. She also recorded in Spanish for the first time, in a single that contained translated versions of "Soleil" ("Sol") and "J'ai coupé le téléphone" ("Corté el teléfono"). In the spring of 1971, <mask> released the Patrick Dewaere-penned single "T'es pas poli", reaching out to the singer-songwriter after being impressed with his performances at the Café de la Gare in Paris. To promote the song, Dewaere and the singer performed it on several television shows.Despite counting on <mask>'s fame, the record did not sell as anticipated. In the early 1970s, <mask> met Tuca—pseudonym of Valeniza Zagni da Silva—a Brazilian singer and guitarist based in Paris, and they soon became close friends. After attending the Festival Internacional da Canção in Rio de Janeiro—and having come into contact with the music of Brazil—<mask> decided to make an album with the Brazilian musician in late 1970. It was the first time in the singer's career that she was able to work with a songwriter on songs before entering the recording studio, in addition to participating in the choice of string arrangements. The resulting album, La question, was released on 16 October 1971, promoted through the singles "Le martien", "Même sous la pluie" and "Rêve". Although it was highly acclaimed by the French press upon release, the album sold poorly in comparison to other works by the singer, as it received little promotion on television, and failed to gain traction on


title: Françoise Hardy

texts:
 radio stations and among audiences at the time. Nevertheless, La question has generated a dedicated cult following since its release and is regarded as <mask>'s artistic peak.The singer reflected in 2008:
I have never been as proud of one of my records as I was of [La question]. (...) This album seems to me to be more homogenous, "classier," and sophisticated than my previous efforts, and while it did not enjoy great success with the public at large, at least I can claim that it did touch another audience. (...) Often an ambitious record can be more or less ignored when it is released but ends up having a long life. The sole concern, and it is a valid one, is that some of the artists who played on it were in no position to wait twenty years to feed themselves. I became increasingly concerned about this situation as time passed, even though creating songs remains a very particular life choice, one that involves accepting natural selection and precarious employment. Following the poor commercial performance of La question, <mask> decided to move towards a different sound and enlisted British arranger Tony Cox to produce her following album. Known as Et si je m'en vais avant toi, L'éclairage or "the orange album"—in reference to its cover—the record was released in November 1972 and promoted through the single "La berlue", released in June.Immediately after finishing Et si je m'en vais avant toi, <mask> and Cox recorded the English-language release If You Listen, which included cover versions of several little-known American and British songs. <mask>'s Sonopresse period, which had started off well thanks to the success of Comment te dire


title: Françoise Hardy

texts: adieu? and Soleil, ended on a sour note with the commercial failure of La question, Et si je m'en vais avant toi and If You Listen—which she nevertheless considered her "best [albums] by far". After her contract expired, the record label decided not to renew it. The singer was relatively unbothered by the poor sales, feeling that she had been artistically vindicated with these records. Around 1972, <mask> contacted songwriter and producer Michel Berger with the intention of working with him, after being impressed by his work with Véronique Sanson. Berger agreed to produce and arrange her following album, but was unable to write all of its music owing to other obligations.He wrote two of the record's twelve songs—"Message personnel" and "Première rencontre"—and took the responsibility for finding the other ten immediately after, which <mask> felt were subpar in comparison. Following a period of artistic independence, the singer again found herself working under the hectic schedule of a demanding producer. She later described Berger as "a man in a hurry, with a thousand things to do, a thousand things to think about, a thousand people to see". The album's recording sessions took place in July 1973, soon after <mask> had given birth to her son Thomas Dutronc. Message personnel was released that year on Warner Bros. Records— with whom <mask> signed a three-year contract— and was greeted with commercial and critical success. Its title track was a big commercial success in France that reignited the singer's career. She promoted the project with appearances on several French TV shows, including Dimanche Salvador, Sports en fête, Top à, La Une


title: Françoise Hardy

texts:
 est à vous, Midi trente, Minuit chez vous, Tempo, Averty's Follies and Domino.For her following project, <mask> wrote ten songs that revolved around a common, underlying story. To put the words into music, she mainly relied on her friend Catherine Lara, also working with Jean-Pierre Castelain and Gérard Kawczynski (with whom she had worked in Message personnel), André Georget and Michel Sivy. Produced by Hughes de Courson, the concept album Entr'acte was released in November 1974 and promoted through the songs "Ce soir", "Je te cherche" and "Il y a eu des nuits". It was a commercial failure. The singer then decided to stay away from music and devote more time to raising her child, releasing only two singles between 1975 and 1976. The first one was the Jean-Michel Jarre-penned "Que vas-tu faire? "—backed by "Le compte a rebours"— which sold poorly.The second one was "Femme parmi les femmes", the main theme of Claude Lelouch's film Si c'était à refaire, featuring lyrics by Pierre Barouh and music by Francis Lai. Around 1976, Berger recontacted <mask> with the intention of signing her to his new record label Apache and she sent him the songs "Ton enfance", "Star" and "L'impasse". However, Berger was keen on releasing an album with compositions structured around a unifying concept, so she gave up the idea of joining the label. She finally signed a three-year contract with Pathé-Marconi. 1977–1995: Work with Gabriel Yared and hiatus

For 1977's Star, her first album released under Pathé-Marconi, <mask> enlisted Gabriel Yared as a producer and arranger. The "patchwork album" includes six tracks written by <mask>, along with songs written by


title: Françoise Hardy

texts:
 Serge Gainsbourg, William Sheller, Catherine Lara, Luc Plamondon, Roland Vincent and Michel Jonasz. At first, their relationship was tense, and Star was recorded under a "strained atmosphere", which earned her the nickname "ice queen".According to Frédéric Quinonero, "the singer deemed it necessary to immediately dispel any misunderstanding, physical or sentimental, before being integrating into a faithful friendship." Star was a commercial success that put the singer back into the media spotlight, introducing her work to a new generation of young people. Despite their stiff relationship in the recording studio, <mask> and Yared would continue to work together for nearly six years and record five albums. In 1991, the singer recalled her work with the producer:
Gabriel [Yared] is demanding, rigorous and, consequently, disturbing, destabilizing, in work as in friendship. He had great influence over me. The five albums we made together were not easy, there were even tensions on the verge of breaking up, but I consider that it was one of the great chances of my life to find myself again under the guidance of a musician of this dimension. Her 1978 follow-up Musique saoûle included compositions by Yared, Alain Goldstein and Michel Jonasz.The album changed <mask>'s musical direction to a more danceable sound with commercial success, aided by the popularity of lead single "J'écoute de la musique saoule", especially its extended remix version. It was promoted through intensive televised appearances, which showed the singer "awkwardly" performing the track among a dancing crowd. Fueled by the popularity of "J'écoute de la musique saoule" with young


title: Françoise Hardy

texts: people, Yared and collaborator Bernard Ilous worked on her following 1980 album Gin Tonic with an even more commercial approach. Its album cover attempted to present a "furiously modern" image of the singer and was photographed by a collaborator from Façade, a French magazine modelled after Andy Warhol's journal Influence. Gin Tonic was promoted through singles "Jazzy rétro Satanas" and "Juke-box", with only the former achieving modest commercial success. Despite reduced sales and mixed reviews, the singer's respectability remained intact and she was invited as a distinguished guest in Maritie and Gilbert Carpentier's TV show Numéro Un in 1980. <mask>'s following album À suivre was released in April 1981 on label Flarenasch, in breach of contract with Pathé-Marconi.It featured a new array of collaborators—presumably because of her dissatisfaction with her previous songs—with Yared enlisting composers Louis Chedid, Pierre Groscolas, Jean-Claude Vannier, Michel Bernholc, Daniel Perreau, Jean-Pierre Bourtayre and Étienne Roda-Gil. À suivre was promoted through singles "Tamalou" and "Villégiature", with only the former achieving commercial success. The album Quelqu'un qui s'en va was released in the spring of 1981 and featured an album cover photographed by Serge Gainsbourg. Décalages was released on 2 May 1988. Promoted as <mask>'s final album, it was a commercial success and was certified gold for selling a hundred thousand copies. In 1990, the singer wrote the song "Fais-moi une place" for Julien Clerc, which was included in his album of the same name. <mask> resumed her music career in the 1990s, signing a contract with Virgin Records in


title: Françoise Hardy

texts:
 December 1994.In 1995, <mask> collaborated with English band Blur in the French version of "To the End", recorded at Abbey Road Studios. It was included as a B-side to their single "Country House". 1996—2021: Final albums and retirement
In 1997, <mask> collaborated with French duo Air in the track "Jeanne", which was included as a B-side to their maxi single "Sexy Boy". In 2000, her album Clair-obscur received the Grand Prize awarded by the Société des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique. In 2005, <mask> received the Female Artist of the Year award for her album Tant de belles choses at the Victoires de la Musique. In 2006, <mask> received the Grande médaille de la chanson française award given by the Académie Française, in recognition of her music career. In 2012, <mask> celebrated her 50th anniversary in music with the release of her first novel and an album that shared the title L'Amour fou.Diagnosed with laryngeal cancer, the singer declared it her last album but nevertheless returned nearly five years later with the 2018 release of Personne d'autre. In March 2021, <mask> announced that she could not sing anymore as a consequence of cancer treatments. Acting career

Although journalists often take note of <mask>'s film roles, she never embarked on a serious career as an actress nor wished to do so. Although reluctant, she accepted several acting roles she was offered in the 1960s on the advice of Jean-Marie Périer. The singer recalled: "I couldn't see how I could turn down offers by well-known film directors. However, I far preferred music to cinema. Music and chanson allow you to go deep into yourself and how you feel, while

masks: Hardy Hardy Hardy Hardy Hardy Hardy Hardy


title: Françoise Hardy

texts: cinema is about playing a part, playing a character who might be miles away from who you are."In 1963, <mask> made her film debut playing the role of Ophelia in Roger Vadim's Château en Suède. Before casting her, Vadim tested <mask>'s abilities as an actress by directing her in a reading of Cécile de Roggendorf's love letters to Giacomo Casanova for radio Europe n° 1. She did not get along well with the director during the making of Château en Suède, who mocked her for her "infinite apathy", and the shooting of the film marked the "beginning of her dread for filming sessions and the movie business in general". In promotion of the film, <mask> attended the Cannes Film Festival, where she wore a black coat by Pierre Cardin. After a cameo in What's New Pussycat?, <mask> landed a role in Jean-Daniel Pollet's 1966 film Une balle au cœur, which was filmed on location in a remote Greek island. Her experience was also unsatisfactory, recalling: "I felt like I was at the other end of the world and my morale sank below zero when, after a day or two, I realized that the director was hopelessly bad and his film was a disaster." Building on her music career success in Italy, <mask> also made appearances as a performer in musicarelli films, including I ragazzi dell'Hully Gully (1964), Questo pazzo, pazzo mondo della canzone (1965), Altissima pressione (1965) and Europa canta (1965).She also appeared in the 1968 television special Monte Carlo: C'est La Rose, hosted by Grace Kelly. In the mid-1960s, American director John Frankenheimer spotted <mask> as she was leaving a London club and thought she would be perfect as one of the characters in Grand Prix,

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title: Françoise Hardy

texts:
 a film he was developing about Formula One auto racing. Despite remaining disinterested in an acting career, <mask> agreed because the film's big-budget production offered her a large remuneration. The singer made a notable cameo in Jean-Luc Godard's 1966 film Masculin féminin, wearing a head-to-toe look by André Courrèges, including his famous white boots. In 1969, she starred in the television film L'homme qui venait du Cher alongside Eddy Mitchell. In the 1970s, she made brief appearances in Jean-Claude Lord's Les Colombes (1972) and Claude Lelouch's Si c'était à refaire (1976). Astrological career
In addition to music, <mask> has developed a career as an astrologer, having written extensively on the subject.She aligns herself with the so-called "conditionalist" school of thought—outlined by Jean-Pierre Nicola in his 1964 book La condition solaire—which puts forward a non-divinatory character of the discipline and considers that it should be used taking into account other factors such as hereditary, educational and socio-cultural determinants. <mask> has written about her distrust of most astrologers and of "predictive astrology", explaining:
... I believe this human science is restricted to offering information on one of the many factors that conditions our lives—the one connected with the rhythms of our solar system. It simply allows us to get our bearings and identify as best we can the various phases of our development, which are dependent on many more factors than just planetary cycles and configurations, and does not necessarily translate into terms of particular events and outcomes. <mask> first became interested in the practice


title: Françoise Hardy

texts: after consulting astrologer André Barbault in the mid-1960s. She took public courses, learned to draw up a birth chart and read many specialized books before meeting Catherine Aubier, who recommended her professor to <mask>. <mask> was then taught traditional astrology for two years by Madame Godefroy in Paris.She became more dedicated to astrology after meeting Nicola in late 1974, who contacted her to be part of a new magazine he was developing. The singer has described Nicola as "the best astrologer in the world" and wrote: "[he] initiated me into an intelligent understanding of astrology and trained me to use it, by his side, to the best of my ability." Besides astrology, <mask> was initiated into the reading of the Tarot of Marseilles by Alejandro Jodorowsky. As a complement to her astrological knowledge, she also took courses with graphologist Germaine Tripier, the dean of the French Society of Graphology. Between recordings of her album Gin Tonic in 1979, <mask> was asked by Nicola to collaborate on a collection on the zodiac signs launched by Tchou Editions, being tasked with writing the book dedicated to Virgo. Since she had no time to write the book by herself, she shared her work with fellow astrologer Béatrice Guénin. She also collaborated with magazine Quinze Ans.In late 1980, <mask> was contacted by Pierre Lescure of the RMC radio station to entrust her with the daily horoscope as well as a weekly show, and she asked Nicola to help her so as to aid him financially. In 1982, <mask> began a new weekly broadcast titled Entre les lignes, entre les signes, in which she interviewed a film or music figure using their birth chart,


title: Françoise Hardy

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 while graphologist Anne-Marie Simmond—whose courses she had taken as well—drew up their psychological portrait using their handwriting. The duo also wrote a book under the same title that compiled the interviews and profiles of the show's guests, first published by RMC in 1986. In 1990, <mask> continued her astrological work by writing articles in Swiss newspaper Le Matin and by hosting a weekly section in Thierry Ardisson's program Télé Zèbre on Antenne 2. On 7 May 2003, <mask> released Les rythmes du zodiaque, which she conceived as "a book that would allow me to make my little contribution to modern astrology." The making of the book was a laborious and stressful process that took <mask> over two years to write. Writing career

In addition to writing about astrology, <mask> has developed as an author of both fiction and non-fiction.Her autobiography Le désespoir des singes... et autres bagatelles was released on 9 October 2008 and became a bestseller in France, with 250,000 copies. The book was translated and published in Spanish by the San Sebastián-based independent publisher Expediciones Polares in 2017. In 2018, the English-language edition of the book was released by Feral House, titled The Despair of Monkeys and Other Trifles and translated by Jon E. Graham. In 2012, <mask> published her first novel L'amour fou on Éditions Albin Michel, released in conjunction with a musical album of the same title. <mask> began working on its story, which deals with an obsessive romantic relationship, thirty years before its publication. <mask> had shelved the text and had no intention of releasing it, but was urged by her editor to do so and


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 agreed after the encouragement of friend Jean-Marie Périer. The singer felt that it was appropriate to publish the book to mark the occasion of her fifty years of music career, as it was "the story that has been the matrix of almost all of my lyrics from the start."In 2013, the Italian-language edition of the novel was released by Florence's Edizioni Clichy. Following the poor sales of albums La pluie sans parapluie and L'Amour fou, <mask> decided to momentarily distance herself from music and dedicate herself to writing. This resulted in the essay Avis non autorisés—released in 2015 on Éditions des Équateurs—in which she expresses the difficulties of reaching her old age. In the book <mask> also shares her views on current affairs, which have been deemed "politically incorrect". Avis non autorisés was a commercial success. A year later, she published Un cadeau du ciel, a book in which she reflects on her hospitalization in March 2015 for cancer, during which she nearly died. In the early 2020s, after being unable to continue singing—claiming she had "nothing else to do"—<mask> dedicated herself to the making of the song book Chansons sur toi et nous—published in 2021 on Éditions des Équateurs—which compiles all of her lyrics and contains commentary on them.Artistry

Musical style

Although <mask>'s music has covered a wide range of genres, she has maintained a signature sound since the beginning of her career, which is defined by her breathy alto vocals and predilection for melancholic songs. Rock & Folks Basile Farkas has dubbed her the "queen of melancholy", and the singer herself stated in 2012: "In music, I like above all the slow,


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texts: sad melodies, that stir the knife in the wound. Not in a way that plunges, but in a way that uplifts. Because it feels good that the pains of feelings turn into something beautiful: a beautiful text, a beautiful melody. I still aspire to find the heartbreaking melody that will bring tears to my eyes. A melody whose quality gives it a sacred dimension." Cosette Schulz of Exclaim!described the singer as a "master of crafting simple but stellar tracks". Writers have likened <mask>'s music to that of English singer Marianne Faithfull. Comparing both singers, The Guardians Keith Altham wrote in 2014: "They both sing sad songs with a simple folksy style. They both have the same shy, wistful, almost waif-like appeal about them. They both have a dramatic, 'all-alone' quality about their voices which commands sympathy and attention." Her deadpan delivery, characterized by its "cool, aloof air", has also been compared to that of German singer Nico. The recurring themes of her lyrics are sadness, personal pain, heartache, one-sided love, sleeplessness, boredom, loneliness and confinement.<mask> is known for her demanding attitude towards her music—such as her decision to leave low-quality French studios to go record in London during the mid-1960s—something that set her apart from her French compatriots. As she matured, <mask> honed her own despairing songwriting, but also chose with alacrity the works on offer from leading professionals. Producer Erick Benzi recalled: "From when she was 18, she knew she was different. She was capable of going in front of big artists like Charles Aznavour and saying, 'Your song is crap, I don't want to sing it.' She


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 never made compromises." Tony Cox recalled his experience working with <mask>: "Françoise was good in that she liked things to be slightly more adventurous than the norm. There was a bit of the Left Bank about her – she’s not your average pop singer, that’s for sure."She is also known for her disapproving views towards her skills as a singer and musician, telling Rock & Folk in 2018: "I'm not a musician, that's it. By stopping to compose, I went towards ease, but also towards realism. I understood that even if I did learn things, I would never be able to do as well as real melodists. That's why I thought it was best to bring in musicians whose work touched me." Development

1962—1967

Most of <mask>'s musical output took place in the 1960s and is thus the one that attracts the most attention by music journalists. She told The Independent in 1996: "Most people don't really know me artistically. The proof is always having to talk about the Sixties and the Beatles."Her earliest musical tastes were French chanson singers—including Cora Vaucaire, Georges Guétary, Charles Trenet and Jacques Brel—since in the 1950s it was the only music played on the radio. She has expressed that Trenet "touches [her] more than the others because his music is sad and light." <mask> was also a big fan of singer and songwriter Barbara, who inspired her to write her own compositions. In the early 1960s, she was introduced to English-language rock and roll and Brill Building pop through Radio Luxembourg, receiving inspiration from artists such as Brenda Lee, the Everly Brothers, the Shadows, Cliff Richard, Neil Sedaka, Connie Francis, and especially, Elvis Presley


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texts: and Paul Anka. <mask> felt "completely spellbound" by these foreign young artists and began to sing and play the guitar to try to imitate them. She recalled in 2008: "I immediately identified with them, because they expressed teenage loneliness and awkwardness over melodies that were much more inspiring than their texts". Although she is regarded as one of the greatest exponents of the yé-yé pop phenomenon of the early-to-mid 1960s, she was set apart from her peers by writing much of her own material, which allowed her songs to be "devoid of older, male sexualization or control, a privilege not many others of her era enjoyed."She also distanced herself from the other yé-yé singers by "eschewing the easy road of sunny, good girl pop". According to Jean-Marie Périer: "She was the opposite of all the French new artists trying to look and sound American. And her melodies were sad, she didn't try to make them dance the twist." Aside from original compositions, much of her 1960s repertoire consisted of versions of foreign artists that spanned a wide range of styles, including American girl-groups, early rockabilly, pre-Beatles British rock and roll, country music, folk, folk-rock and, to a lesser extent, doo-wop and soul. Her rockabilly-tinged full-length debut Tous les garçons et les filles is the closest she was to the yé-yé genre and its noted for its simplicity, featuring minimalist accompaniment of acoustic and electric guitar, bass and jazz-influenced percussion. Robert Ham of Paste felt that the album "reveals a musician that had yet to fully absorb her influences and make them her own." Russell Warfield of Drowned in Sound felt that


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texts: "her first record sticks out like a sore thumb" and described it as "the product of a patriarchal music industry", as <mask> was untrusted to shape her own material.Considered an artistic growth, her sophomore record Le premier bonheur du jour incorporated more complex instrumentation and lyricism, including electric organs and "weeping" string arrangements. It includes compositions inspired by jazz music, as well as American girl groups such as the Crystals and the Ronettes. Despite their enduring popularity, <mask> is highly critical of her first releases. She told Clash in 2018: "From very early on I felt very frustrated because I wanted to have beautiful electric guitars like those of the Shadows in the sixties or those of Cigarettes After Sex now. Instead, I had very bad French musicians and a terribly bad musical production. My albums began to improve when I went to London to record them. My first songs were not very interesting either."Beginning in the mid-1960s, her music became lusher and richer, as she eschewed the poor quality of French studios in 1964 to go record in London with arranger Charles Blackwell, who allowed her to "reach new levels of sophistication." She told The Guardian in 2018: "I was happy from that moment. I was free to make another kind of music, not this mechanical music I had been trapped in." <mask>'s music during the second half of the decade incorporated influences from the British Invasion pop phenomenon and "a strong comeback of the traditional values of French chanson, neither yé-yé nor 'Left Bank', but rather romantic." Released that year, Mon amie la rose showcased a growing complexity in her music,


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 with stronger vocals and increased experimentation in song structure. Her most varied album yet, it incorporated influences of Phil Spector's Wall of Sound technique, as well as Italian composer Ennio Morricone. Her 1965 and 1966 output showcased a stylistic maturation, with productions that "moved from the tinny sound of yeh-yeh pop into a fuller brand of rock arrangements."The overall sound of her follow-up L'amitié is considerably more expansive. According to Pitchfork's Hazel Cills: "It wasn’t until her fifth record La maison où j'ai grandi that <mask> grew into a more grown-up, baroque sound, one that matched the depth of her sorrow and its complexities." Likewise, Warfield considered that it was the album in which "she really settles into her sound, giving us a glimpse of the performer we can still recognise as a 70-year-old". With Ma jeunesse fout le camp, her last 1960s album recorded in London, she "moved toward a more adult, sedate form of orchestrated pop balladry". It has been described as "her farewell to the yé-yé years". 1968—1974

Her return to French recording studios, 1968's Comment te dire adieu is more MOR-oriented than her previous releases. Richie Unterberger considered its music to be "perhaps even sadder and more sentimental than was the norm for Françoise".As the yé-yé era faded away following the May 68 protests, <mask> "smartly reinvented herself as an elusive folk rock jazz chanteuse" with her early 1970s releases. The singer looked for a more mature and less-pop oriented style in an effort to reflect her inner self to a greater extent. Described as "the first truly personal <mask> <mask> record", the 1971

masks: Hardy Hardy Françoise Hardy


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texts: album La question is regarded as an important turning point in her career, moving towards a less commercial sound with no apparent hooks. It is one of her "most sparsely produced efforts," with subdued and acoustic-flavored arrangements that feature guitar, touches of bass, and subtle orchestration. Through the work of Brazilian guitarist and arranger Tuca, the album incorporates marked influences of bossa nova music. Her vocals have been called "sultry" and "breathy", at times "[substituting] melodic humming in the place of singing, wordlessly articulating the emotional essence of the song." La question also marked the first time that <mask> had a part in choosing the string arrangements of her work.Following the poor commercial performance of La question, <mask> leaned towards a more folk and rock-influenced sound. Around this time, she became an admirer of then little-known English folk singer-songwriter Nick Drake and championed his work in interviews. She recalled:  "For me, he didn't belong to a particularly British tradition: his style was quite different from that of The Beatles, the Stones and other groups that I was listening to a lot around this time. It is the soul which comes out of his songs that touched me deeply – romantic, poetic... but also the refined melodies. As well as the very individual timbre of his voice, which adds to the melancholy of the whole thing." According to Tom Pinnock: "There are certainly analogues with Nick Drake, in their personalities, voices and even a similar taste in chords and harmony." This led Joe Boyd to propose that the English musician write an album of songs for her, which would be


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texts: produced by Tony Cox.Although Drake and <mask> met several times, including a visit to her recording sessions in London, the project was never carried out. Nevertheless, Cox was keen to work with <mask> regardless and, in late 1971, they recorded If You Listen, which featured a "crack team" of British folk-rock musicians. Influenced by Drake, the album showcases <mask>'s taste for this musical style at the time, featuring "cinematic" arrangements that emphasize the acoustic guitar and light strings. The same year, she released Et si je m'en vais avant toi, also known as "the orange album" in reference to its cover, which incorporated influences from American blues, folk and rock music. The album features a slightly humorous tone and catchier rhythms, which were atypical for the singer. In 1972, Véronique Sanson's debut album made a great impact on <mask>, who began to feel her own music was "very outdated". She described her impression of Sanson in her autobiography: "The originality and quality of the melodies, the lyrics, the production, and the singing made all other French singers, starting with me, seem like hasbeens.(...) It was as if the English and American influences that yé-yé had been happy to simply copy with varying degrees of success had been thoroughly digested and allowed for the emergence of something much more musically mature, as well as more personal." <mask> thus enlisted Michel Berger, the producer of Sanson's album, to oversee the production of her 1973 album Message personnel, which features arrangements by Michel Bernholc, who directed "a basic rock band backed by a lush set of strings [underlining] <mask>'s wispy


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 yet compelling vocals." The album is characterized by its sad, introspective mood and "classy, adult tone". The 1974 release Entr'acte was <mask>'s first attempt at a concept album, with lyrics that narrate "the successive phases of a one-night stand between a stranger and a young woman, who, abandoned by the man she loves, is looking to give him a taste of his own medicine." It featured orchestral arrangements by Del Newman, who had recently worked on Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Cat Stevens' Tea for the Tillerman. 1975—2018
A jazz-oriented pop record, 1977's Star was <mask>'s first album arranged by Gabriel Yared, who would produce her output for the next ten years. In 1978, as disco dominated the music industry, his team sought to adapt her sound to the era with the release of Musique saoûle, which incorporated a marked binary rhythm influenced by funk music.The singer later stated that she felt uncomfortable and embarrassed when singing over danceable rhythms. The 1988 album Décalages is noted for its layered, atmospheric sound. It incorporated the use of a Synclavier synthesizer, despite the singer's wishes to avoid fashionable digital sounds in favor of an acoustic album. Deeply inspired by the alternative rock scene, <mask> veered into an assertive, guitar-oriented modern rock style with Le danger, her first album in seven years. She incorporated influences from English band Portishead, and the grunge, Britpop and roots rock genres. Pitchfork's Jazz Monroe described its music as "adult-contemporary space rock". The album's harsh sound and lyrics reflect the "very dark" period that the singer was living in her personal


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 life at that time.The commercial failure of Le danger, among other reasons, caused <mask> to return to her characteristic soft and light style in her following album Clair-obscur, released in 2000. Her last five albums are characterized by their elegant and melancholic sound. 2006's (Parenthèses...) is a collection of twelve duets with a production that "[keeps] tricks and mixing slick-ery to a tasteful minimum," drawing comparisons to previous uncluttered releases such as La question. Compared to previous albums, 2010's La pluie sans parapluie features a "sunnier" sound, with a few of its songs being driven by a typical rhythm track of drums and bass, rather than by piano or strings. Her 2012 album L'amour fou features half-sung, half-spoken vocals and is characterized by its "resigned, philosophical" mood. <mask> is backed by "classy" pianos, minor chords and brushed drums. The lyrics of her last album Personne d'autre, released in 2018, deal with her advancing years in repose and her own mortality, having survived a major health crisis after the release of her previous record.Her vocals in the album show the wear and tear resulting from her ilness. The dark lyrical subject matter of Personne d'autre is contrasted with the singer's characteristic delicate and intimate sound. Public image and impact

As a public figure, <mask> is renowned for her shyness and reservedness, and observers have emphasized her "anti-social nature as a celebrity". She has been open in her autobiography and in interviews about her struggles with anxiety, self-doubt, loneliness and inferiority complex. Uncuts Tom Pinnock noted that "it was her refusal to play


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texts: the showbusiness game that made her something of an icon." The singer's sudden celebrity status was a source of great discomfort for her, claiming in 2011: "I didn't enjoy at all everything, the trappings, when all of a sudden you become very famous. (...) [Being taken up by fashion houses] was work, things I had to do, a chore—I didn't enjoy it at all...It is quite impossible to stand—to be admired too much—it is not a normal situation. I don't like that at all. I am not comfortable with my professional life really, so the word 'icon'—it's as though you were talking about someone else, it's not me really." She regularly suffered from stage fright, which led to her stopping performing live altogether in 1968. Her public image and style during the 1960s made an impact on international pop culture, something that overshadowed her skills as a singer outside of France. As <mask>'s almost exclusive photographer and agent during the decade, Jean-Marie Périer became a Pygmalion-like figure for her, transforming the singer's public image from "a shy, gauche-looking schoolgirl" into a "modern young trend-setter." She wrote: "...[Périer] tried to open my mind and help me in all domains with his characteristic generosity.For example, he taught me to love the cinema by bringing me to see great films, and under his tutelage I realized the importance of aesthetics, which became one of my major criteria. He taught me how to carry myself and to dress, and gave me advice on social skills". He persuaded the singer to begin modelling and she soon became "a star of the international fashion world as well as the French music scene." She was also notably


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texts: photographed by Gered Mankowitz, William Klein and Richard Avedon for Vogue and other publications. Her regular appearance on magazine covers gave her the reputation of being the quintessential French cover girl of the 1960s. In 1967, teen magazine Special Pop wrote: "Françoise manages to attract both kids and their parents, men and women alike. More than a singer, she's becoming a universal myth with whom thousands of young girls dream of identifying."Nevertheless, she was disenchanted with the lifestyle of the jet-set and high society, and in the 1970s abandoned the image of "fashionable young girl about town" that Périer had created for her. An "it girl" and fashion icon, <mask> was considered the epitome of "the 'Modern Woman'" and of 1960s French chic and cool, known for her avant-garde and futuristic fashion choices. Brett Marie of PopMatters noted that "her sense of style and '60s-era model figure made her as much an icon of fashion as a music-business star." She recalled in 2008: "At the start of the 1960s, all of a sudden, my slender build, which made me so self-conscious, became fashionable." The singer began to be regarded as an "égérie" 'muse' by the top French fashion designers of the time, including André Courrèges, Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent. <mask> championed the first incarnation of Saint-Laurent's rupturist 1966 design Le Smoking. The designer recalled the time he took the singer to the Paris Opera dressed in one of his tuxedos: "People screamed and hollered.It was an outrage". She was also an early fan of Paco Rabanne, earning the Spanish designer popularity by wearing his creations for both photoshoots and


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texts: television performances. Her 1968 photographs wearing a golden, metal minidress by Paco Rabanne—dubbed "the most expensive dress in the world" at the time— are now considered "legendary" and "perhaps her most iconic look". In 1968, <mask> told a reporter that: "If it weren't for the way I dress, no one would notice me". Likewise, she told Vanity Fair in 2018: "My songs had little interest compared to the Anglo-Saxon production. So I took it to heart to dress well every time I went to London or New York. I was above all a fashion ambassador."<mask> also modelled the creations of the nascent prêt-à-porter industry, a new wave of French female designers known as the "yé-yé school" or "the stylistes", who rebelled against the "strictures of haute couture". For instance, she helped launch the career of Sonia Rykiel by wearing her influential "poor boy sweater" on the cover of Elle, and was photographed by David Bailey wearing Emmanuelle Khanh's color-blocking coat for Vogue. Fashion Institute of Technology's Colleen Hill considers <mask>'s style to be the most enduring out of all the yé-yé girls, noting that "her nonchalance is an important part of her appeal. <mask>'s fashion choices, such as her white Courrèges pantsuits and Yves Saint Laurent's first Le Smoking, are distinctly '60s and streamlined, yet they also have an edge." In addition to high-fashion ensembles, <mask> was known for her pared-down style, with discreet hairdos and makeup, and often wearing a simple sweater and pants combination. Her signature look was defined by her famous bangs and use of white boots by Courrèges and miniskirts, considered one of the first people to wear


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texts: the latter. She also regularly experimented with androgynous silhouettes.As such, she has been described as the "anti-Bardot", imposing a beauty ideal that "rendered the exaggerated femininity of the sex-kitten of the time old-fashioned". In the second half of the decade, <mask> became a pop icon and was consequently made a muse by numerous creative people. She was the subject of portraits by artists Michel Bourdais, Bernard Buffet, Gabriel Pasqualini and Jean-Paul Goude. In 1965, Jacques Prévert wrote a poem dedicated to the singer titled Une plante verte, which was read as part of <mask>'s performance at the Olympia. She was also the subject of a poem by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán and an open letter by Paul Guth. Belgian illustrator Guy Peellaert used <mask> as a model for the title character of his 1968 pop art and psychedelic-inspired comic Pravda la Survireuse, made in collaboration with French screenwriter Pascal Thomas. The singer was admired by Spanish artist Salvador Dalí, who invited her to spend a whole week with him in Cadaqués in 1968.Outside of France, <mask> was also regarded as an icon in the Swinging London scene. She acknowledges to having been a "source of fascination for the English pop musicians" during that time. Malcolm McLaren described her as the "utmost of the pinup girl, pinned to the walls of every trendy pop apprentice's bedroom down in Chelsea. Many bands in their prime, like the Beatles or the Stones, dreamt of dating her." Her image fascinated the young David Bowie, Mick Jagger (who described her as his "ideal woman"), Brian Jones, Morrissey, and Richard Thompson. Bob Dylan was notably infatuated by the


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 singer and included a beat poem dedicated to her on the back cover of his 1964 album Another Side of Bob Dylan. It begins: "for françoise hardy/at the seine's edge/a giant shadow/of notre dame/seeks t' grab my foot/sorbonne students/whirl by on thin bicycles/swirlin' lifelike colors of leather spin..." In 2018, <mask> told Uncut that two Americans had sent her several drafts of the poem that Dylan had left in a café, stating: "...I was very moved. This was a young man, a very romantic artist, who had a fixation on somebody only from a picture. You know how very young people are... I realised it had been very important for him." <mask> and Dylan only met in May 1966, behind the scenes of his performance at the Olympia. Noticing that <mask> was among the concert's audience, Dylan refused to go back on stage to perform the second half unless she went to his dressing room. She and other singers later joined Dylan at his suite in the Four Seasons Hotel George V, where he gifted her early pressings of "Just Like a Woman" and "I Want You".Legacy and influence

<mask> is celebrated as a "French national treasure" and one of the greatest figures in French music of all time. She is one of the best-selling music artists in French history, with over 7.6 million records sold as of November 2017. American critic Richie Unterberger described her as "indisputably the finest pop-rock artist to emerge from that country in the 1960s." He also listed the singer as one of the artists he would like to be inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2011, an entry of <mask> was included in Le Petit Larousse Illustré. Long after her heyday in the 1960s, <mask>


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texts: continues to be regarded as an iconic and influential figure in fashion history. During his time at Balenciaga, designer Nicolas Ghesquière described her in Vogue as "the very essence of French style".The iconic photographs of the singer wearing a Paco Rabanne metal plated dress inspired Lizzy Gardiner's design of both the costumes of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and her own Oscars dress. <mask> was a muse to Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo, who named her label Comme des Garçons after a lyric in the song "Tous les garçons et les filles". Over her career, <mask> has amassed a large fanbase among gay men and is regarded as a gay icon by the community, declaring on several occasions that "her most devoted friends and fans are gay". <mask>'s musical influence is mostly found in the work of Francophone acts such as Coralie Clément, La Femme, Juliette Armanet, Melody's Echo Chamber, Keren Ann and Carla Bruni, who used <mask> as a blueprint for her musical debut. Writers have pointed to her influence on the music of English avant-pop group Stereolab, including similarities in <mask>'s vocals and those of lead singer Lætitia Sadier. Outside the French-speaking world, she has also been mentioned as an inspiration to female singer-songwriters like Caroline Polachek, Charli XCX, Angel Olsen, Candie Payne, Erin Rae, Heather Trost, Violetta Zironi, Zooey Deschanel and Cat Power. <mask> has also been an influence to several alternative music acts, including Broadcast, Goldfrapp, Jeremy Jay, The Chap and Xeno & Oaklander.In 2021, Rivers Cuomo of American rock band Weezer cited <mask> as one of his "sonic ideals", particularly influenced by her album


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 Message personnel. Greg Gonzalez of American dream pop band Cigarettes After Sex called <mask> one of his biggest musical influences, stating in 2016: "La question is just so perfect, I wanted that kind of beauty." Her hit songs "Tous les garçons et les filles", "Le temps de l'amour", "Comment te dire adieu", "Message personnel", "Mon amie la rose", "L'amitié" and "La question" have appeared in several critcs' lists on the greatest French songs of all time. Her 1968 album Comment te dire adieu? was included in Rock & Folks list of "The Best Albums from 1963 to 1999", Les Inrockuptibles "50 Years of Rock'n'Roll" and Stan Cuesta's La discothèque parfaite de la chanson française. The 1971 cult album La question appeared in The Guardians "1000 albums to hear before you die", Gilles Verlant's "300+ Best Albums in the History of Rock", Christophe Conte's La française pop and Stan Cuesta's La discothèque parfaite de la chanson française. In 2017, Pitchfork ranked Tous les garçons et les filles ninetieth on its list of "The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s", with Marc Hogan describing it as "an enduring middle ground between rockabilly shimmy and Gallic introspection, delivered by the most glamorous wallflower in France."Personal life

Family

In mid-1962, <mask> met Salut Les Copains photographer Jean-Marie Périer and they soon developed a romantic and professional relationship. The couple never moved in together and were constantly distanced because of their respective work obligations, which took a toll on the relationship. They broke up in 1966, but have remained close friends and collaborators ever since. <mask> began her much publicized