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Leisure Class

Nicolas Sarkozy trades in French cuffs for weathered dungarees. By Nicholas Mosquera

April 2008

The Gallic leader in his now signature jeans with wife Carla Bruni at the pyramids of Giza. (Photo: Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images)

The market-friendly French president Nicolas Sarkozy has made the Fifth Republic a safer haven for cold, hard capitalism, but did he need to adopt that American phenomenon most foul: business-casual attire? Since his election last May, Sarkozy has globe-trotted from French Guyana to Giza to Kennebunkport wearing not the standard-issue dark suit but a blazer paired with some rather billowy blue jeans of questionable wash, slightly faded at the knee. While his good buddy George W. Bush — usually not a stickler for convention — will invariably don a boxy two-piece when not out clearing some brush, Sarkozy apparently doesn't mind looking more like a Crawford cowpoke than a Seine statesman, whether on official business or a romantic getaway. In fact, his recent marriage to Italian-born supermodel-cum-singer-cum-First Madame Carla Bruni has only spurred these rustic outbursts, and even an outing to Versailles with his new in-laws resulted in galling defiance of Gallic convention. Laissez-faire, it seems, is alive and well.

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