One of the best things about getting a little older is knowing exactly what outfits work for you – and French first lady Brigitte Macron sure knows it!
While younger political wives such as Melania Trump are sometimes prey to fashion’s whims, Macron sticks to her signature looks, which usually consist of classic jackets paired with simple dresses or trousers, even though she has Paris’ finest fashion houses at her beck and call.
This week was no different, with the glamorous 65-year-old wife of French President Emmanuel Macron looking sleek and sophisticated as she and her husband met Russian President Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg. The former teacher – Macron met her husband when he was her teenage pupil – looked elegant in a black shift dress with a classic trench coat, made more interesting with black buttons, and paired with simple black stilettoes and a ladylike structured handbag.
The shift-dress-and-classic-coat pairing is look she’s made work for her on international tours already, having worn a lemon dress with a matching lemon-coloured, knee-length coat with black ribbon and button details when meeting US President Donald Trump and his wife Melania in America in April.
She pulled out similar combos elsewhere on the US trip, including in black with silver buttons and an embellished collar while visiting the graves of former US president John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie Kennedy at the Arlington National Cemetery.
The French first lady also turns to another tried-and-trusted classic ensemble – a Chanel-style boucle wool jacket over a matching dress – for official occasions, including when she visited Germany in May, where she was snapped with her husband alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
That too was a look she perfected in the US, where she upstaged an over-dressed Melania Trump with a simple white dress and matching waist-length boucle jacked. Again, small black details on the coat and pockets, and her trusty black stilletoes, were all Macron needed to look polished without being over-the-top.
On less formal occasions, the 65-year-old blonde also stays true to her preferred ‘uniform’ of tight-fitting trousers with more sharply cut jackets, often in a military style, worn with stilletoes or pointy-toed boots. She wore just when out and about during her German trip, pairing a vibrant purple jacket with slim black trousers and black boots.
The dressed-up factor of a well-cut jacket manages to elevate even a pair of denim jeans to official wear for Macron, who chose a pair of matching navy blue stilletoes to complete her outfit when she met Latifa Ibn Zlaten, the mother of a French soldier assassinated in 2012, at the Presidential palace this week.