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Just why is it that we never see the French first lady, Brigitte Macron, commit a fashion faux pas? How is it that this 70-year-old grandmother can, for example, pull off black leather trousers, really quite short dresses, or a swimming costume for a cover shoot? With the King and Queen’s state visit in France this week providing yet another welcome opportunity for scrutiny of Madame Macron’s impeccable wardrobe, she always seems to exemplify faultless French chic. In fact, we’re calling it – with those impossibly toned, glossy bronzed legs, the power blow-dries and endless outfit wins, she’s starting to seem like “Brigitte Barbie TM”. In a good way. The explanation to the questions above can be found within the Mme Macron Venn diagram of style. The French first lady has at her disposal a long list of extremely cool and effortlessly elegant French style icons from which to borrow all manner of trademark looks and ripped-up rulebooks (French women adore a broken fashion rule). This Venn diagram features some of the heroines of French-girl style, from film stars Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve to rock-chic fashion editor Carine Roitfeld, to the most iconic French fashion plate of all, Coco Chanel, with Brigitte Macron standing in the middle of it all, assimilating all of their signatures and making them her own. Sensuality, age defiance, and lots and lots of leg are at the core of it. Who would have thought that you could say that about a first-lady Barbie? So what exactly are the components of the ultimate Venn diagram of Brigitte chic? 1. Carine Roitfeld Bare-legged, kohled eyes, teak-tanned – the superficial similarities between “Brigitte Barbie “and the former French Vogue editor-in-chief, Carine Roitfeld, are plain to see. (Note: that pulling off this formula requires innate French insouciance and je ne sais quoi in order to avoid looking like a superannuated Towie star, as we Brits inevitably would be given the same treatment.) Of course, it wouldn’t do for Mme Macron – at least in her public-facing guise – to go the full rock’n’roll Roitfeld, all femme fatale black leather pencil skirts, lace tights and dresses slashed to the thigh. But Roitfeld’s influence is still clear to see: just a year younger than Brigitte Macron if the ex-Vogue editor says it’s fine for grandmothers – as they both are – to wear towering heels with (some way) above-the-knee skirts, douse themselves in bronzer, and scaffold their eyelashes with whacking great shelves of black mascara, who are we to argue? 2. Brigitte Bardot Most wouldn’t even dare to take inspiration from the blonde bombshell that was Bardot – who are we, after all, to think there could be any physical connection? But, as we are so often told, French women are made of different stuff (not to mention, calorie-negative croissants). They are just naturally confident in their God-given sex appeal – while we wear pants, they wear lingerie, while we wear PJs, they wear negligees. None more so, it seems, than Brigitte Macron, the glamazon of first ladies – the woman who arranged to be photographed in a blue floral halterneck swimsuit on a Biarritz beach for Paris Match ahead of her husband’s 2016 presidential campaign. Smooth, tanned legs, beachy, undone hair, and the victorious smile of a woman who’s bagged a handsome younger husband, there was a clear resemblance of a confident, carefree “Bardot does Cannes” – the original sex bomb; the epitome of feminine sexuality. This is surely Mme Macron’s unspoken cause, to remind women that they too can be sexy whatever their age. 3. Catherine Deneuve Did any woman in French history have a better blonde blowout than the iconic French film star Catherine Deneuve? If glamour, polish and sex appeal are your watchwords (as they evidently are with Brigitte Macron), why wouldn’t you take a leaf out of Deneuve’s playbook and infuse your hair with buttery blondeness, volume and lift? Of course, expensive, high-maintenance hair is a terribly middle-aged French woman pursuit, because they all know that, as ably demonstrated by Mme Deneuve, big blonde hair is a fast track to voluptuousness when the body is perhaps less inclined (the Macrons, by the way, are understood to spend €62,000 a year on hair and make-up, as revealed in 2018 by the French Court of Audit). What’s more, a golden crown of bouffy hair creates a perfect frame for wearing more make-up than is strictly necessary. But the Deneuve reference is not just concerned with big hair – or, indeed, their shared love of late Parisian designer Yves Saint Laurent (which the French first lady wore to welcome the king and queen on their state visit, and which Deneuve commissioned for her first meeting with the late Queen Elizabeth II – and which always, always lends an elegant, sophisticated simplicity). It’s about an attitude, one that is cool, sexy and a little edgy, with so much going on beneath the surface. It’s all tres, tres French. 4. Françoise Hardy As any fashion historian will tell you, the French chanteuse Françoise Hardy set the benchmark for wearing leather with effortless chic. In fact, she famously “double leathered” with a black leather biker jacket and black leather trousers while sitting on the back of a motorbike, her luxuriant, fringed hair unfettered by any unsexy safety equipment. Brigitte Macron might not be able to do the motorbike, but she can – and regularly does – do the skinny leather pants. Worn black like Hardy, with yet more of Mme Macron’s beloved sky-high heels, the French first lady ably demonstrates what Theresa May was just never going to grasp – that succeeding with leather, is all about sex. You don’t achieve sex appeal by wearing leather, but rather, you pull off leather when you have an innate ability to deploy some sensuality. Sometimes you just have to leave it to the French. 5. Coco Chanel There surely isn’t a French woman of any standing whose fashion sense isn’t informed by Coco Chanel. And of course, Brigitte Macron would not be doing her job as ambassador-in-chief of French fashion if she were not seen to be wearing plenty of Chanel. But that’s not really the point here. It’s not just about being able to have an ample, Chanel-labelled armoury of classic design, good taste and French chic – as displayed this week when Queen Camilla and the French first lady visited Chanel, Brigitte Macron wearing a red boucle long line jacket from the fashion house (think, as ever, a strong shoulder, a nipped waist and flattering tailoring). Non, it’s about “liberté”. Chanel’s fashion philosophy was about freedom of movement and independence so when Brigitte Macron teams a blazer with jeans (admittedly unlikely on this state visit but clearly in evidence on many a walkabout), you know who paved the way for that. Chanel style is also about ensuring that you are the statement as opposed to your outfit. With Brigitte Macron’s style signature being legs, lashes and a distinct lack of apology for not dressing her age, Coco would surely be proud. Read More Queen Camilla enjoys game of ping pong with Brigitte Macron In Pictures: King delivers historic address to French senate King Charles and Queen Camilla greeted by Emmanuel Macron and his wife in Paris Queen Camilla enjoys game of ping pong with Brigitte Macron King Charles to address French senate in historic first King Charles and Queen Camilla greeted by Emmanuel Macron and his wife in Paris

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The newfound presence of Wagner mercenaries in Belarus, exiled from Russia after their mutinous march on Moscow, has fuelled fresh anxieties in Ukraine and on Nato’s eastern flank. Belarus’s neighbours have moved to a heightened state of alert since dictator Alexander Lukashenko appeared to broker a last-minute deal with the Kremlin to defuse the shortlived mutiny on 23 June and host Wagner troops on Belarusian soil. During a recent meeting at the strategically important Suwalki Gap, a sparsely populated land corridor near their countries’ borders with Belarus and Russia’s enclave of Kaliningrad, Lithuania’s president Gitanas Nauseda warned that north of 4,000 mercenaries were believed to be in Belarus, while Poland’s premier Mateusz Morawiecki branded them “extremely dangerous”. Poland is sending 10,000 troops to its eastern border, and this week held its largest military parade in decades, as it warned that Wagner mercenaries had moved towards Grodno and set up camp in the Brest region, some six miles from Poland’s border. A group associated with Ukraine’s military has also warned that the construction of a “tent city” capable of housing 1,000 mercenaries some 15 miles from its border could be used to simulate a threat there, in a bid to detract from Kyiv’s efforts to make painstaking gains along the heavily mined frontline of Russia’s invasion in the south, and defend a push by Moscow’s forces near Kupiansk in the north. The true extent to which Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin’s guns for hire are now operating in Belarus – and their aims there – remains hard to determine. “We are dealing with layer upon layer of disinformation,” said Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House. “Not only the repeated information campaign trying to convince Ukraine that there is a renewed threat from the north, but also confusion over exactly what Wagner is doing, who they are reporting to, who they are following orders from, and where they might be.” These factors make it hard to distinguish how much of the threat is “manufactured” to pile pressure on Belarus’s neighbours, Mr Giles said, adding: “The simple answer is that we don’t know. We should watch what is actually being done rather than what is being said.” However, Mark Galeotti, director of the Mayak Intelligence consultancy, said he believed Ukraine’s military was not “in the slightest bit worried” about the threat of Wagner attempting to cross its northern border. Speaking of claims the mercenaries could try to cross into Poland or Ukraine, he said: “In some ways, Wagner is a victim of its brand name, and people are suggesting it’s going to do all types of crazy things that are totally beyond their capabilities, but also which frankly no one would even try.” Wagner has “lost all of its heavy equipment”, he added, with Russia’s defence ministry making “damn sure” to reclaim tanks and artillery handed to the mercenaries while in Ukraine, meaning “we’re talking about a bunch of guys with Kalashnikovs, rather than a sort of fully coherent mechanised force”. Citing reports that funding disputes have already seen some mercenaries bussed back to Russia, Mr Galeotti said Ukraine has “ample forces to stop 2,000 guys with guns wandering over” a border “carefully watched” due to its proximity to Kyiv, most likely including by Nato. While he believes Wagner would not pose much of a direct threat even if better equipped, Nick Reynolds, the Royal United Services Institute’s research fellow for land warfare, said the possibility of disruption “can’t be discounted”. Read more: Wagner tracker: Charting Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mercenary group through the Ukraine war Wagner’s presence – along with that of Belarusian and Russian forces – means Ukraine does have to devote some troops to guard the border, which already comes under “a lot of artillery and drone strikes”, albeit not as heavily as troops along frontlines in the Donbas and further south, he said. While Poland’s concerns have been stoked by Mr Lukashenko’s jibes that the country should thank him for constraining Wagner mercenaries he claimed wish to “[smash] up Rzeszow and Warsaw”, the Belarusian leader vowed in February that Minsk would only enter the war if attacked by Ukraine – despite reports of pressure from Vladimir Putin to do so. Mr Reynolds said he did not foresee any real threat from Belarus this year due to the weakness of Minsk’s military and Russia’s presence there being “just not strong enough to credibly pose a threat of opening a second front” – although Moscow’s mobilisation efforts mean “that might change in time”. “Something I’d watch much more closely in the short-term is Wagner’s international footprint,” he said, adding that the group’s compromised position within Russia itself could see it lean more heavily on its activities in Africa and the Middle East, which are of “enormous value diplomatically” to the Kremlin. Mr Giles also warned that “forces taking orders from Russia or Belarus do not need to be large or well-equipped to cause disruption”. He pointed to the “migrant dumping campaign” initiated by Belarus in 2021, with its Baltic neighbours in Warsaw, Vilnius and Riga once again accusing Minsk in recent days of sending asylum-seekers en masse to the border to in a bid to pile pressure on them. And he highlighted the power of Wagner “as an information weapon”, whether to distract Ukraine or “throw some kind of provocation with Poland to try to back the fiction that Lukashenko presents to his people of Poland being an aggressive and threatening neighbour.” Dr Marina Miron, of King’s College London’s war studies department, agreed that an attempted incursion doesn’t make “any kind of sense” logistically, saying: “I think it’s more of a kind of psychological operation than anything else. At least for now.” While the risk is currently low, “at some point, they will be returning to Ukraine”, said Dr Miron. “That’s when there will be a definite threat.” Read More Wagner mercenaries issue a chilling message on Poland’s doorstep: ‘We are here’ Ukraine’s intelligence service claims responsibility for Crimean Bridge drone attack Lithuania to temporarily close two checkpoints with Belarus amid tensions on border Wagner tracker: Charting Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mercenary group through the Ukraine war

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