KEY POINTS:
Carla Bruni says that she would like to be considered as the new Jackie Kennedy.
France's first lady, who is still Italian and not yet French, says in an interview this week her principal role model is American Jackie Kennedy.
Yes, she would like to see herself as part of a new Kennedyesque dream couple, symbolising youth and energy and change.
"She [Jackie] was so young and modern, and of course unconsciously I would project myself more like Jackie Kennedy than, for instance, Mme de Gaulle, the classical French woman behind her husband."
Carla also says she would never allow herself to be photographed ladling soup for her husband at the Elysee Palace, as France's first post-war first lady, Yvonne de Gaulle, was.
Instead, for an exclusive photo shoot by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair magazine, which hits the stands on Saturday, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy climbs on to the roof of the Elysee Palace in a blood-red, strapless dress.
She is portrayed, beautiful as ever, her hair trailing in the Paris breeze, the Eiffel Tower in the distance, sauntering sexily down the stepped roof of the palace as if she were on the catwalk, or the stage at a pop concert.
Carla Bruni-Sarkozy continues to take French public life into startlingly new territory.
Her third folk-pop album, now in its third week at the top of the French charts, contains explicit references to sex and drugs of a kind which would have been banned in France two decades ago.
Most people don't seem to mind very much though.
Carla's opinion ratings are floating in the mid to high 60s. The French, who were suspicious at first, have come to admire her beauty, cheek, self-assurance, good manners.
None of that seems to have helped her husband very much. His popularity rating remains mired in the 30s or low 40s.
There are even whispers the President is growing tired of Carlamania.
He is not a man who likes to share the limelight.
CARLA BRUNI-SARKOZY
Nee: Carla Bruni Tedeschi.
Aka: Carla Bruni.
Born: Turin, Italy, December 23, 1967.
Height: 1.75m (5ft 9in).
Designers: Dior, Armani.
Nude moment: Photograph taken in 1993 was auctioned for £45,000 ($121,250) last April after a state visit by the Sarkozys to London.
Married: Nicolas Sarkozy.
Children: One son.
She says: "I'm monogamous occasionally, but I prefer polygamy and polyandry. Love lasts a long time, but burning desire, two to three weeks."
They say: "Please Mick, not this one. I think I'm in love."
- Eric Clapton on seeing the reaction when Mick Jagger met the then 21-year-old model Bruni.
JACQUELINE KENNEDY ONASSIS
Nee: Jacqueline Bouvier.
Aka: Jackie O.
Born: New York, July 28, 1929.
Height: 1.70m (5ft 7in).
Designers: Cassini, Halston.
Nude moment: Snapped while sunbathing nude in 1975. Hustler magazine's five-page pictorial sold more than three million copies.
Married: John F. Kennedy, Aristotle Onassis.
Children: One daughter, one son.
She said: "There are two kinds of women, those who want power in the world and those who want power in bed."
They said: "I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris and I have enjoyed it."
- President John F. Kennedy, 1961.
- INDEPENDENT
