CARLA BRUNI Sarkozy may be France's weapon of mass seduction, but a clothing retail chain on the French island of La Réunion, in the Indian Ocean, learned to its cost yesterday the danger of exploiting Bruni Sarkozy's image in cavalier fashion.
"The unauthorised use of the image of Carla Bruni caused her moral and economic damage," a court in the island's capital, Saint Denis de la Réunion, said when announcing its decision to award Bruni €40,000 in damages. The first lady said she would give the money to charity.
The clothing company, called Pardon, printed up 10,000 cheap carrier bags emblazoned with a 1993 black-and-white photograph of Bruni.
In the photograph, Bruni poses naked, facing the camera, pigeon-toed, with her hands covering her private parts.
The picture was taken by the Swiss fashion photographer Michel Comte for an anti-Aids campaign. It made headlines last April when a print was sold at auction in New York for $91,000 (€63,000).
Bruni's lawyers argued that Pardon diverted the picture from its original purpose. On the bags manufactured in La Réunion, a bubble coming out of Bruni's mouth says: "My boyfriend should have bought me Pardon."
A French radio presenter joked that the real problem was the cheap quality of the bags. If they'd been made by Hermès or Gucci, he alleged, Bruni might not have minded. Pardon promised to destroy the remaining 5,500 bags, after 4,500 were sold for €3 a piece, or given away to customers who made purchases of €5 or more.
Copies of the "Carla bag", a jute shoulder bag in the colours of the South African flag which was given to the first lady during a visit last winter, were sold by the chic Paris boutique Colette for €100 each, with Bruni's blessing, to finance a new sewing workshop in the South African slum where the bag originated.
In an interview with the US magazine Vanity Fairlast summer, Bruni said: "I never realised how manynude pictures I did before I met Nicolas." Before the couple married last February, she felt it necessary to show him the images in her computer. "I took him and said: 'Okay, now I need to show you, because I posed in the nude. But I never did sexy pictures.'"
Bruni said the photographers she worked with were "great artists" and, "Plus, I have a body that would allow me to pose nude without being very provocative."
As the French president looked through the nude photographs, Bruni recounted to Vanity Fair, she told him: "You must know that this is going to come out." Sarkozy replied, "Oh, I like this one! Can I have a print of it?"
France's first couple successfully sued Ryanair last February for using their photograph in an advertisement with a speech-bubble saying: "With Ryanair, my whole family can come to my wedding." Bruni was awarded €60,000 in the Ryanair case.
More recently, Mr Sarkozy sued the manufacturer of a voodoo doll in his image. The court said the doll was "an offence against the personal dignity" of the president, but allowed it to remain on sale.