French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is trying to win over People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), and it’s sort of working. Carla wrote a letter to PETA claiming that she does not buy or wear fur, and she only wears skin/leather products of animals “raised for feeding purposes.” Which makes sense in the larger view – use all parts of the animal, if an animal has to die, make sure everything is being utilized so there’s no waste. Except that how does Carla (or anyone for that matter) know if the leather products come from animals that are also being used for food? There’s the “cruelty-free” label, but from my understanding, that’s just for leather harvested from “naturally deceased animals.” Perhaps Carla thinks that if she’s wearing leather from cows, naturally, all of those cows have been made into a nice juicy steak. Mmm… steak.

PETA actually contained themselves when Carla admitted in the letter that she was not a vegetarian. PETA spokesperson Dan Matthews was able to get a handle on himself and managed not to scream, “No one can ever eat meat, ever, ever, ever!” Matthews only picked up on the leather stuff – he says that PETA is sending over some Stella McCartney non-leather shoes so Carla can “see that no animals have to be fashion victims.” Uh… if I send a letter to PETA telling them that I don’t wear fur (which is totally true), will they send me a pair of Stella McCartney shoes?

FRANCE’S Carla Bruni-Sarkozy has captured the hearts of animal activists in a big way.

In a letter to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, France’s first lady writes: “I do not wear, buy or own fur or animal skin other than leather or skin of animals raised for feeding purposes. I am not a vegetarian and I don’t find it illogical to wear skins of animals whose meat is also eaten.”

She adds: “I would gladly consider giving away sable, fox and other fur coats — if I owned any.”

PETA honcho Dan Mathews is impressed. “Carla’s obviously for ward-thinking,” he told us. “And when she gets the chic, non-leather shoes we’re sending from Stella McCartney’s Paris boutique, we’re confident she’ll see that no animals have to be fashion victims.”

[From Page Six]

I want a pair of shoes! PETA, I don’t wear fur! But I have a lot of leather shoes and purses – so maybe a couple of pretty non-leather purses from Hermes, or something?

It’s interesting that PETA decided to send Carla a pair of shoes – she recently gave an interview where she admitted she really regrets the focus on her flat footwear. She (and the international press) are obsessed with how she towers over her husband, and Carla has taken to wearing flats almost all of the time. Also, if you want to see some cool pictures of Carla and Michelle Obama’s“fashion face-off” in France this past weekend, Huffington Post had some good fashion coverage.

It’s always struck me that French President Nicolas Sarkozy knew what he was getting into when he married Carla Bruni. There’s something almost admirable about Carla’s refusal to be embarrassed by her extensive sexual past, and her two decades of bohemian life. Carla never lied about who she was or what she did – and I, for one, appreciate that.

When she was a model, Carla posed nude many, many times. And before she even met Sarkozy, she had a relationship with a married man, Raphael Enthoven. When they broke up, apparently Raphael still had many photographs and videos of Carla – many of them nudes, or perhaps even a few sex tapes. What to do with a sex tape of yourself with an ex? Raphael decided to hand these items over to his brother, Julien.

Julien’s Paris apartment was just burgled – and the thieves got away with the photographs and the sex tapes. Police are investigating, but people feel strongly that sometime soon, a Carla Bruni sex tape will be leaked.

Hundreds of ‘highly intimate’ images of Carla Bruni and an ex-lover have been stolen during a burglary in Paris. Police fear they could now be made public, overshadowing the French First Lady’ s official trip to Spain with her husband, President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The photographs and videos were taken during 41-year-old Miss Bruni’s affair with philosopher Raphaël Enthoven – the father of her child, Aurélien, eight.

Thieves broke into the flat of actor Julien Enthoven, who is Raphaël’s younger brother. Raphaël is believed to have entrusted the pictures to his 27-year-old brother because he did not want them to embarrass his new partner – or Mr Sarkozy, said a detective working on the case.

‘The thieves appeared to know exactly what they were looking for – taking highly intimate prints, a camera full of further images, videos, and numerous computer files,’ said the source.

‘They broke into Mr Enthoven’s flat in Rue Dauphine, in the sixth arrondissement, on Sunday night, smashing a window in the sitting room which looks out on to the courtyard. Nobody was at home at the time, and nothing else was taken.’

Police now fear that thieves could take advantage of Miss Bruni’s status as an international sex symbol by selling the pictures for hundreds of thousands of pounds. They could be posted on the web so as to cause maximum embarrassment to Mr Sarkozy, who is only too well aware of his third wife’s colourful past.

As embarrassed French officials tried to play down the burglary as a opportunist one, neighbours in the mansion block where Julien Enthoven lives said it was ‘extremely suspicious’.

‘It’s almost impossible to get into any of the flats here, and burglaries are pretty much unheard of’ said Jean-Frederic Avel, who lives nearby.

‘Nobody heard anything, even though they say a window was smashed in the courtyard. It seems strange that photos of Carla Bruni should have been targeted and then an announcement made about their disappearance.

‘Also, what kind of a person keeps dozens of photographs of his brother’s ex-lover? Something does not add up here.’

Jennifer Scott, another neighbour, said: ‘It was certainly a very strange burglary. Perhaps somebody wanted these pictures out of the way?’

The flat is in a secure block in one of the most upmarket, chic streets on Paris’s Left Bank – an area which is always swarming with police.

Ms Bruni is around a decade older than Raphaël Enthoven, and went out with him until 2007, but the pair never lived together as a conventional family, either with or without their son. Throughout this period, Ms Bruni had to put up with antagonism from Miss Lévy, daughter of famous French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy.

Miss Lévy’s book also portrayed Ms Bruni as ‘a leech of a woman’ who had plastic surgery. Ms Bruni’s ex-lovers including British rock stars Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, as well as a number of other public figures.

‘We are doing everything we can to retrieve the images, and would ask anyone with any information about them to come forward immediately,’ the detective added.

Ms Bruni had been living with the Enthoven’s father, the Paris philosopher Jean-Paul Enthoven, in the later 1990s before cheating on him with his married elder son. Raphaël Enthoven’s ex-wife, the author Justine Lévy, has never forgiven her for the affair – portraying Ms Bruni in a book as a ‘husband stealer’ with a ‘terminator smile’.

Nude pictures of Ms Bruni were released just before a state visit to Britain last year. Since then she has been trying hard to tone down her risqué image. Official pictures of Ms Bruni in her now trademark style – demure designer dresses and low-heeled or flat shoes – have been making front pages and leading TV new bulletins during the current trip to Spain.

The timing of the burglary – on the eve of the official visit – is a cause of deep concern.

[From The Daily Mail]

I love all of the conspiracy theories of the French neighbors – “Maybe Sarkozy burgled the apartment with ninjas!” And then another one chimes in, “No! I heard Bernard-Henri Lévy hired the CIA to do the deal!”

If there really are Carla Bruni sex tapes (very possible, in my opinion), I doubt it will be a huge international scandal. Or am I underestimating this? It will be good gossip, and maybe even a half-decent sex tape… but will it really change international politics? And I doubt President Sarkozy even cares – he knows who he married.

Here’s French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni Sarkozy meeting with the Spanish Royals, King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia at Zarzuela Palace in Spain yesterday. Images thanks to Fame Pictures .

Carla Bruni, supermodel/singer/man-eater/France’s glamorous First Lady, has made the mainstream French establishment gasp. For like the millionth time. Carla gave an interview to the magazine Madame Figaro, and she said that if she doesn’t get pregnant soon, adoption is on the table. Carla says she’s “not obsessed by blood ties”.

President Sarkozy and Carla just celebrated their first wedding anniversary. They were married after a whirlwind three-month courtship. Sarko (his press nickname) had been married twice before and already has three children. Carla has one 7-year-old son, whose father was one of her many glamorous and controversial conquests, a man who is still in her life.

In the interview, Carla alludes to the fact that she and Sarko has been trying to get pregnant. The 41-year-old also says she’s “not going to fight against nature”, which I guess is a way of saying that she and Sarko don’t want to go through any fertility procedures to get pregnant. The Daily Mail has more:

France’s first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy says she would like to have a baby and if that does not work out she would be happy to adopt one.

The comments, made in an interview with the magazine Madame Figaro, come just over a year after the supermodel-turned-pop star married President Nicolas Sarkozy. Asked whether she wanted a baby, 41-year-old Bruni-Sarkozy said: ‘I would like that, but I don’t know if it will be possible at my age… If it’s not possible biologically, I will adopt one. I’m not obsessed by blood ties. I think you can form strong bonds without that.’

Bruni-Sarkozy has a 7-year-old son from a previous relationship while her husband, who is 54, has three children from his two previous marriages. There has been intense speculation in the celebrity press about whether the Sarkozy couple planned to try for a child.

‘I would love to have a child but I’m not going to fight against nature. I already have one and my husband has three, so you can’t really say we are desperate for children,’ she said.

The pair met in November 2007, just weeks after Sarkozy divorced from his second wife Cecilia, and tied the knot less than three months later. Their whirlwind romance captured the public imagination in France and abroad, generating dozens of glossy magazine covers, but many criticised Sarkozy for putting his private life first at a time when the country was facing economic difficulties.

Turning to a vein of commentary that has run through French media coverage of their relationship, Bruni-Sarkozy said it was not true she had more highbrow cultural tastes than her husband.

‘There is this stereotype about the right in general and my husband in particular: that they lack culture,’ she said. ‘One day I read an article saying that my husband never read a book. The man who wrote the article must live with us since he knows that my husband never reads! The truth is that my husband spends all his free time reading.’

The bookworm Sarkozy was currently reading works by the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, the 19th century novelist Alexandre Dumas and the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, the first lady said.

[From The Daily Mail]

Jean-Paul Sartre’s writing is over-rated. Carla should suggest Sartre’s lover, The Second Sex author Simone de Beauvoir for a good read.

Back on topic, this little piece of information is sure to throw the French – and probably the entire European – media into a tizzy. At first, the attention on Carla and Sarko’s relationship was almost entirely negative. But a few months into their marriage, something changed. The French people, and everyone who met Carla, started seeing her as her husband’s best asset. Carla travels with her husband, she’s always decked out in beautiful clothes, and she’s actually not that political, so she‘s not vying with her husband‘s agenda. She’s sort of like a really glamorous, sexy version of Laura Bush. Or something.

Here’s Carla Bruni-Sarkozy attending the Fashion Dinner for AIDS benefit at the Pavillon d’Armenonville in Paris on January 29th. Images thanks to WENN.com.

Hello! Magazine has a new interview with hot French first lady Carla Bruni Sarkozy and I found myself impressed with the way she views the gossip press and journalists. She realizes that if she wants to use them for publicity for her projects she’s got to take the gossip that goes along with that. She says it doesn’t bother her and she understands that journalism is a difficult job and that people are going to talk crap about her.

40 year-old former model and singer Carla Bruni Sarkozy made headlines around the world when she married divorced French president Nicolas Sarkozy, 53, in February after a whirlwind womance. She’s a controversial figure and once had an affair with the married son of her boyfriend at the time. The son’s wife is a novelist and wrote a book inspired by her husband’s infidelity in which she described the other woman as “a praying mantis.” Carla has had relationships with Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton, and Donald Trump and has said that shequickly tires of monogamy and prefers “polygamy.” [details from Wikipedia]

In her Hello! Interview, you can see how Bruni she copes with the negative press about her. She just figures it’s part of the deal and that people are going to say negative things no matter what she does. I don’t know if she’s being manipulative by phrasing it so cleverly, but her flattery and attitude won me over:

Do you get angry about some of the things the press write?
“No, I think it’s a very hard job. Journalism isn’t easy. Many of my friends are journalists, so I know it’s a special, creative job. I respect the press and have never had any problems with it, so whatever they write, I don’t really care. It’s impossible to control the press, so there’s no point trying.”

Not everybody sees it that way…
“With my modeling and songwriting, maybe the press is manipulating me but I’m using them to spread my work and image. So it’s a deal. I don’t feel stressed by it. I could have chosen to be a doctor or a lawyer. I’ve had a lucky life so far.”

Why didn’t you become a doctor or a lawyer?
“Too much studying. Maybe I’m too lazy for it. But everybody is free to chose a job that doesn’t have a public image. And there are many fantastic jobs. So when I chose those two jobs no one forced me to do so. And when I married my husband I chose it. So I will not say, ‘It’s so hard and I feel like a victim.’ I’m not the victim of anything. And if people don’t like my work or my image they are allowed to say so. This is democracy. It’s very important.”

[From Hello! Magazine, print edition, July 22, 2008]

How awesome is this woman? She should give seminars for celebrities on how to cope with fame. Of course Bruni has to have it a lot easier in France than the celebrities stalked by the paparazzi in America. She said that she loves to go to the movies with her husband, the President, and that sometimes they slip in and out of the theater with only a few people noticing them and they usually just say hi without freaking out.

Bruni may have had a book written about her homewrecking, but she knows that comes with the territory and she doesn’t really care. Can our French readers please enlighten me about the way she’s portrayed in the press there? I would assume the gossip culture is much different.

Carla Bruni Sarkozy is promoting her latest album, her third, titled “Comme si de rien n’était,” which means “As if Nothing Ever Happened.” Here she is singing “Quelqu’Un M’A Dit” which is from her first album released in 2003.

Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni-Sarkozy are shown at “Gala dinner for the first summit of the ‘Union for the Mediterranean’ held at the Grand Palais” in Paris on 7/13/08. Credit: WENN