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Françoise Hardy, one of France’s most beloved singer-songwriters, has died at the age of 80. Her son, Thomas Dutronc, also a musician, confirmed her passing on social media, stating, “Mum is gone.”

Hardy emerged onto the music scene in 1962, becoming a cultural icon who influenced artists like Mick Jagger and Bob Dylan. Renowned for her melancholic ballads, she epitomized France’s Yé-yé pop movement, which was influenced by English music. Some of her most famous songs include “Tous les garçons et les filles” (“All the Boys and Girls”), “Comment te dire adieu” (“It Hurts to Say Goodbye”), and “Mon amie la rose” (“My Friend the Rose”). Her biggest hit in the UK was “All Over The World,” the English version of “Dans le monde entier,” reaching number 16 in June 1965.

Born in Nazi-occupied Paris in 1944 and raised by her mother, Hardy was inspired by Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard, among others, listening to them on Radio Luxembourg. She signed her first record deal at 17 and had her breakthrough in 1962 with “Tous les garçons et les filles,” a hit in both France and the UK.

Her style caught the attention of fashion designers, leading her to model for Yves Saint Laurent and Paco Rabanne, who created a famous gold plate dress for her. Mick Jagger once described her as the “ideal woman,” and Bob Dylan wrote several love letters to her, even addressing her in a poem on his 1964 album “Another Side of Bob Dylan.”

One of Hardy’s notable performances was in 1968 with “Comment te dire adieu,” a French adaptation by Serge Gainsbourg of an English song. The song, about a painful goodbye to a man with a “heart of pyrex,” has been covered numerous times. Throughout her career, she collaborated with artists like Blur and Iggy Pop.

Besides her music career, Hardy was an actress in films by directors like Jean-Luc Godard, Roger Vadim, and John Frankenheimer, and she was also a writer of both fiction and non-fiction, with a particular interest in astrology from the 1970s.

Hardy was married to singer Jacques Dutronc, with whom she had her son, Thomas. Although they separated in the late 1980s, she often referred to Dutronc as the love of her life. Diagnosed with lymphoma in 2004, Hardy’s health declined over the years. In 2015, she was in an induced coma for weeks following a fall, and in 2021, she revealed she had cancer in one of her ears and felt “close to the end.”

Her career spanned over five decades, with nearly 30 albums released. Her final album, “Personne D’Autre” (“Nobody Else”), came out in 2018. Rolling Stone ranked her number 162 on its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time in 2023. Following her death, France’s Culture Minister, Rachida Dati, paid tribute, calling her an “eternal legend of French song” who touched the heart of an entire nation.

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Famous perfume and clothing designer Paco Rabanne passed away at age 88 in his French home.

The parent business of his brands, Puig, announced his passing and said that he had “marked generations with his bold vision of fashion and his legacy will live on.”

Rabanne’s unusual clothing creations brought him international acclaim. Rabanne’s work, which, in the words of Puig’s fashion president José Manuel Albesa, “made transgression magnetic,” was praised.

Rabanne was hailed as a “important personality in fashion” by Marc Puig, chairman and chief executive officer of Puig, for his “daunting, revolutionary, and provocative perspective, delivered through a unique aesthetic.”

In the Basque area of Spain, not far from the city of San Sebastian, Rabanne was born into a military family. In 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, Gen. Francisco Franco’s nationalist forces assassinated his father, a colonel in the Republican military.

After the Nationalist troops captured Madrid and won the war in 1939, his mother, who had previously worked as a seamstress for fashion designer Cristobal Balenciaga, relocated the family to Paris.

Rabanne was raised in the French capital before enrolling at the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts to study architecture, where he also worked as a freelance illustrator.

His innovations permeated every facet of his enterprise. In the middle of the 1990s, he was one of the first scent creators to introduce a product online.
Rabanne withdrew from the fashion industry in 1999, having spent years as one of the leading pioneers in the sector. He hardly appeared in the media for the next 24 years.

The company praised him as a “visionary” and called him “among the most important fashion figures of the 20th Century” in a statement posted on Paco Rabanne’s official Instagram. It said, “His legacy will continue to serve as a source of inspiration.”

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