The Summer Look of: Brigitte Bardot

 
A few days out of town and high summer called for an unplanned short blogging break as well. Summer also calls for a talk about Brigitte Bardot and her warm weather style. It was her, after all, who put St. Tropez on the map in 1956, when she starred in the film And God Created Woman. And it was the sunny blonde who, with her part innocent, part temptress attitude, made the bikini popular in Europe and America, after if it had been invented one decade earlier, in 1946, by French tailor Louis Reard. Brigitte Bardot bought a house in St. Tropez in 1958, La Madrague, which became her home, and she came to epitomize the carefree, laid-back, sun-kissed lifestyle.

A swimsuit and a wide-brimmed hat were her outfit du jour. She made fishermen’s pants and t-shirts sexy and championed the most simple piece of footwear, the ballet flat (whenever she wasn’t going barefoot). Low-cut jumpers that left her shoulders bare, caftans and shorts completed her seaside look.
 

 
Brigitte Bardot also loved to have fun with prints. She transformed gingham, the fabric originally used for household linen, into a much imitated fashion – she would wear everything from bikinis and shorts, to capri pants and her wedding dress to Jacques Charrier in 1959, in the checkered cloth. Stripes – she relaunched the Breton top invented by Coco Chanel in a new, sexy version – and florals were part of her low-key French Riviera style, too. In the 1960s there was no one who embodied the French chic as Bardot did, and although she retired from acting in 1973, at the height of her beauty, turning her back to stardom, she is still referenced as a muse in contemporary style.
 

 
photos (all taken in St. Tropez): 1-Robert Cohen / 6-Bettman/Corbis (1,2-via Vanity Fair) / 2-Jean Pierre Bonnotte (with her son, Nicolas Charrier) / 3,4-Nicolas Tikhomiroff, Brigitte Bardot at La Madrague, 1960 / 5-Life Magazine / 7,8-Brigitte Bardot in her home in St. Tropez, La Madrague / 9-Edward Quinn, 1959 (Brigitte Bardot and Jacques Charrier) / 10-via France South Coast / 11-unknown, via Pinterest / 12-unknown, via Pinterest