Vanessa Paradis covers the September issue of Marie Claire France. I’m not sure when the interview and photo shoot went down – Vanessa and Johnny Depp announced their formal split on June 19th, which would have been right around the time that Vanessa would have been posing for a September cover. I haven’t found an English translation of the MC France interview yet, so I really don’t know what she’s talking about in the magazine. So let’s just discuss her photo shoot, shall we? First of all, I think she looks great. Vanessa usually isn’t styled this way – she often goes with a more hippie/boho/gypsy-princess vibe. This shoot feels more 1980s and glam. I can’t say I’m crazy about her frizzed-out hair – Vanessa normally has good hair, so I don’t get this.

Meanwhile, Vanessa also has a new interview in the September issue of Harper’s Bazaar (US). Page Six says this piece went down two days before the split announcement in June. With this one, we don’t have any Bazaar photos yet, but we do have a few excerpts:

French beauty Vanessa Paradis spoke wistfully about love just before she split with Johnny Depp.

“Love is the strongest and most fragile thing we have in life,” Paradis says in Harper’s Bazaar’s September issue in an interview done two days before they announced they’d broken up. “Nothing is ever for sure, but when something in love doesn’t work from the beginning, it’s never going to work. Don’t push it,” she also says.

Paradis and Depp have two children. They split in June after 14 years together.

[From Page Six]

Damn, those two quotes made me really sad. Love is “the most fragile thing”? “When something in love doesn’t work from the beginning, it’s never going to work. Don’t push it”??? Vanessa is such a buzz-kill, and I mean that in a sympathetic way. It would be easier for all of us if she came out of the gate with a lot of anger or with a lot of self-pity. Instead, she just seems kind of sad and reflective. Poor V. I do believe that she was trying to work it out with Johnny.

Apparently, VP is also interviewed in the new issue of Elle France too. Here are some excerpts from that interview:

On Johnny: “I don’t want to talk about him. Who said that artists should sell their soul, expose everything about themselves? … It’s my duty to promote this movie, and my albums, but can you imagine what it feels like to see people making a business out of your pain.” She adds: “What’s happened to us is our concern.”

Happiness: “I don’t have the recipe for happiness, but I think the engine is simply having the desire,” she says. “It’s not feeling obliged or forced or repeating yourself. I hate, for example, whenever you hear someone say: ‘You have work at being a couple,'” she continues. “No, you have to want to be there. And for me, I want to be right where I am right now.'”

The future: VP says she’ll continue to divide her time between the United States and France, and their children, Lily-Rose, 14, and Jack, 10, will attend school in Los Angeles. “My children are grown now, they are more independent,” she says, noting that Lily-Rose is the same age as Paradis when she broke internationally as a pop singer. “My daughter loves singing above all else. Jack, he’s a guitarist.”

What if her kids follow in their parents’ footsteps? “I can tell you that if they decide to launch themselves into this kind of career it will be a good thing for music,” says, but after hesitating adds, “For my part, although I do not regret what I did, I’d prefer that my daughter takes the time to learn, and, especially, to live her childhood thoroughly.”

[Via People Mag]

I like this part a lot – “I hate, for example, whenever you hear someone say: ‘You have work at being a couple.’ No, you have to want to be there.” That’s profound. For real. And while I think relationships/marriages DO take work (what would I know, though?), I do think that there’s a fundamental decision: “Do I want to be here? Does the other person want to be here?” It goes along with, “Is this something worth fighting for?”

Photos courtesy of Marie Claire France.