Francoise Hardy, legendary French music and fashion icon, dead at 80

Legendary French singer, model and actress Francoise Hardy has died aged 80 after a long battle with cancer.

The iconic figure is closely associated with the Swinging Sixties, although her career spanned decades, with her last album released in 2018.

Her death was announced by her son Thomas Dutronc, who posted a picture of himself as a baby with his mother and the words: “Maman est partie” (mum is gone).

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Hardy had battled lymphatic and laryngeal cancer for 20 years and had become a passionate advocate for the legalisation of assisted suicide.

She rose to fame at just 18 with her first hit Tous les Garcons et les Filles (All The Boys and Girls) in 1962 and was instrumental in founding the French pop musical style known as yé-yé, derived from the English “yeah! yeah!” made popular by bands such as The Beatles.

She became known for her elegance, her melancholy chanson style of singing, her effortless Parisian style and her unique take on songs by the likes of Serge Gainsbourg and Leonard Cohen.

Apart from a prolific recorded output, Hardy also appeared in a number of films, including Grand Prix (1966), directed by John Frankenheimer, and If It Had to Be Done Again (1976), directed by Claude Lelouche.

However, she always preferred singing to acting, as she told The New York Times in 2018.

“I couldn’t see how I could turn down offers by well-known film directors,” she said.

“However, I far preferred music to cinema.

“Music and chanson allow you to go deep into yourself and how you feel, while cinema is about playing a part, playing a character who might be miles away from who you are.”

Hardy sang in French, English, German and Italian, ensuring that her success was global, not just restricted to the French-speaking world.

She was the only French artist to appear in a 2023 ranking of the 200 greatest singers of all time published by Rolling Stone Magazine.

Bob Dylan was a fan of her work, once writing a poem dedicated to her, which appeared on the back cover of his early album Another Side of Bob Dylan.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s she retained a strong presence on the French cultural scene, often sitting front row at Paris fashion shows.

In 1981, she married French singer-songwriter Jacques Dutronc, with whom she had been in a relationship since 1967; their only son, Thomas, was born in 1973.

She wrote a biography, The Despair of Monkeys and Other Trifles, in 2018 — the same year she released her final albu, Personne d’Autre (Nobody Else).

Her advocacy for euthanasia began after she revealed in 2019 that she had undergone 45 rounds of radiotherapy for throat cancer.

“At a certain point, when there is far too much pain and no hope, you have to end the suffering,” she said in a radio interview in 2021.

“It is not for the doctors to accede to each request, but to shorten the unnecessary suffering of an incurable disease from the moment it becomes unbearable,” she told Paris Match in 2023.

Tributes have begun pouring in from those who knew her, worked with her, or simply admired her from afar.

The official Paco Rabanne Instagram page posted several and videos images of Hardy wearing the brand in the 1960s with the caption: “Forever an icon. Forever our muse. Forever Francoise.”

“How to say goodbye to her?” wrote France’s cultural minister Rachida Dati on X.

“Eternal Francoise Hardy, legend of French song, who entered, through her sensitivity and her melodies, into the heart of an entire country.”

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