Carla Bruni

Carla Bruni, now known by her name of use Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is an Italian-French singer, songwriter and former model. She married the then President of the French Republic Nicolas Sarkozy in February 2008.

Bruni is heiress to the fortune created by the Italian tire manufacturing company CEAT, founded in the 1920s by her legal grandfather, Virginio Bruni Tedeschi. The company was sold in the 1970s to Pirelli .The family moved to France in 1975, reportedly to escape the threat of kidnapping by the Red Brigades, a Marxist-Leninist Revolutionary group active in Italy in the 1970s. Bruni grew up in France from age seven, and attended boarding school in Switzerland. She went to Paris to study art and architecture, but left school at 19 to become a model.


Bruni signed with City Models at age 19. Paul Marciano, president and creative director of Guess? Inc., came across her picture among composite cards of aspiring models and chose her to model with Estelle Lefébure in campaigns for Guess? jeans. Bruni subsequently worked for designers and fashion houses such as Christian Dior, Givenchy, Paco Rabanne, Sonia Rykiel, Christian Lacroix, Karl Lagerfeld, John Galliano, Yves Saint-Laurent, Shiatzy Chen, Chanel and Versace. By the 1990s, Bruni was among the 20 highest-paid fashion models, earning US$7.5 million in her peak year. While modeling, Bruni dated Eric Clapton, then Mick Jagger.On 11 April 2008, a 1993 nude photograph of Bruni taken during her modelling career sold at auction for US$91,000  – more than 60 times the expected price. She was a modeling subject of a 1999 trompe-l'œil wool-knit dress body painting by Joanne Gair that is included in Gair's second book, Body Painting: Masterpieces by Joanne Gair.