Brigitte Bardot

"But this triumphant gamble led to Boussac, the textile king, having a certain fixed mindset about fashion. From now on, he would think it was dictated by the designer and that he was the only inventor. The “street” only follows what is “the right creation.” Another event he often cited to support his thesis is that of Brigitte Bardot: “To give you an example, when Brigitte Bardot wore a gingham checkered white and pink wedding dress a few years later, we suddenly saw thousands of women in the street wearing outfits and blouses in small checkered gingham. That’s how fashion is created.”"

"But in 1960, he lost the benefit of the military deferment he had obtained some time before Dior’s death. Reason: the need for men in Algeria. Messmer granted him, to allow him to ensure the July 1960 collection, a final incorporation deadline that the political context did not allow to extend beyond September e: General de Gaulle had thundered in the Council of Ministers against the “draft dodgers” and Marcel Boussac found himself in an embarrassing situation because L’Aurore, very “French Algeria”, had launched a campaign against Jacques Charrier, Brigitte Bardot’s ex-husband, who was also trying to escape conscription. Unpleasant tangle!"

"The first was, ‘If you could be anyone in the world who would it be?’ Early on Gibbs had assumed that people would probably prefer to be soccer stars, Brigitte Bardot, billionaires or someone glamorous. To his surprise, everyone he asked, after a little thought, preferred to remain themselves. He has been equally amazed by the responses to his second question: ‘If you could be any age, what would it be?’ Again, he’d assumed that older people would want to be younger, but very few did. Around 90 per cent of the people he asked were happy where they were and didn’t really want to go back. The third question he found most interesting: ‘What would you do if your aunt died and left you a lot of money?’ Invariably people said they’d pay off mortgages, buy certain things, travel a bit, but virtually no one told him that they’d radically alter their lives if they had access to money. The most dramatic example of this was a young English girl that Gibbs had started talking to in a Hong Kong bar. She’d told him her life story, how she’d been a chorus dancer in London, then had spent a few years working on boats in the Caribbean and was now working her way around the world, and how what she really wanted was to get back on to the stage. When Gibbs asked her what she’d do if her auntie died and left her £200,000, she said she would have a party with her best mates until it was gone. She then laughed and said, ‘Doesn’t that make a fool of what I’ve told you.’ Gibbs observes: *I find it amazing that through our genes nature makes nearly everyone content to be who they are, whatever their age and circumstances.*"