Françoise Hardy and Serge Gainsbourg

Françoise Hardy (1944 to 2024) and Serge Gainsbourg (1928 to 1991) were two of the most photographed people in Paris in the 1960s and 1970s. Both moved in the same music world, both were dressed by the most daring designers of the day for the camera, and both are remembered as style figures. Look past the famous photographs, though, and each turns out to have dressed off duty in a small, steady set of clothes. These are two personal uniforms from the same decade, and they still have something to teach.

This study draws only on obituaries, museum records and published fashion writing about them.

Françoise Hardy: couture for the camera, staples for life

Hardy became famous at 18, in 1962, with a song she wrote herself, “Tous les garçons et les filles.” Within a few years she was a fixture of French magazine covers, photographed for Vogue by the likes of Richard Avedon and William Klein.

For the camera she wore spectacular things. Fashion writers point to a 1966 Saint Laurent tuxedo in black velvet, and to the futuristic dresses of Paco Rabanne and André Courrèges. Those are the images that circulate.

Her everyday wardrobe was much plainer. The fashion magazine i-D describes her off-duty clothes in the 1960s as French staples: black turtlenecks, gabardine trench coats and sunglasses. By the end of the decade she had moved toward fitted, more masculine shapes, such as cropped trousers, leather jackets, straight jeans and Chelsea or knee-high boots. A 1977 photograph shows her in flared jeans and a striped shirt. Even her couture leaned toward trousers. The Museum at FIT holds a Courrèges top-and-trouser ensemble and notes that this style, in white wool, was a favorite of hers. Courrèges, the museum adds, was like Saint Laurent an early champion of women wearing pants for nearly any occasion.

What the uniform did for her. It let the spectacular pieces stay spectacular. A metal dress for a photo shoot and a turtleneck and trousers for the rest of the week is a sensible division of labor. Most of us do the reverse: we buy for the occasional big moment and then find our everyday clothes do not quite work.

Serge Gainsbourg: the shoe he bought again and again

Gainsbourg lived at 5 bis rue de Verneuil, in Paris, from 1969 until his death in 1991. His daughter Charlotte kept the house as it was, and it opened to visitors in September 2023 as Maison Gainsbourg. Upstairs, Wallpaper reported at the opening, a small closet holds his carefully edited wardrobe: jeans, a few shirts and jackets, neckties and several pairs of the white Repetto shoes he wore without socks.

Those shoes are the center of his uniform. The Zizi is a soft lace-up shoe that Repetto, the Paris maker of dance shoes, named for the dancer Zizi Jeanmaire. Jane Birkin bought him a pair. Her explanation, as reported by nss magazine, was that he wanted “gloves for his feet.” After that he kept buying the same model, in white and sometimes black, until 1991, and wore it with an open-necked shirt and jeans. Earlier he had been known for pinstripe suits, which, as MR PORTER’s account of his style describes, he went on wearing into the 1970s with denim or khaki military shirts.

What the uniform did for him. A writer who studies his style told MR PORTER that Gainsbourg’s clothes were a large part of a persona he carefully curated. A uniform does that well. Once the look is settled, every new purchase is a replacement, not a reinvention, and the persona stays recognizable for decades.

Two uniforms from the same decade

Hardy’s uniform was a palette of staples with room for variation: the trench, the knit, the trouser or jean, the boot. Gainsbourg’s was closer to a fixed formula, the same shoe and the same few pieces repeated. Both are forms of uniform dressing. Photographs of both still circulate as style references half a century later, which is the quiet advantage of clothes chosen for how they work rather than how new they are.

What a reader takes from it

Keep the spectacular for special occasions. Hardy’s best-known clothes were worn for cameras and stages. Her daily clothes were few and plain. If you love statement pieces, give them their occasions and let a small set of staples do the rest. Our guide to dressing in repeats covers the everyday half.

Find the item you would happily buy again. Gainsbourg’s Zizi is the purest example of buying the same thing twice on purpose. When you find a shoe, a shirt or a pair of trousers that works perfectly, write down exactly what it is. Replacing it like for like is the buy it for life idea at the scale of a wardrobe.

Let the uniform carry the identity. Both of them were recognized by their clothes without changing them every season. That is the opposite of keeping up with the Joneses, where the standard is always someone else’s latest purchase. A settled look does not need the next thing to stay current.