Given her eventful past, Carla Bruni could have been considered quite a liability for her husband, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, on his first state visit to Britain. After all, the first time Bruni punctured British consciousness was a few years back, when she had an affair with Mick Jagger under the nose of then wife Jerry Hall; this week, many newspapers ran a nude photograph of Bruni, taken during her modelling career, which was certainly pretty, but not exactly presidential. Then there was her declaration last year: "I'm monogamous occasionally, but I prefer polygamy and polyandry [its female equivalent]." Excellent! Casting occasional rock chanteuse Bruni in the role of the sweet, uncontroversial consort seemed to offer up the delicious possibility that it could all go very, very wrong.

From the moment that she stepped on to British turf this week, though, it became clear that it would go deliciously right: Bruni, the Italian-born heiress, may have had her wild moments but she has this French first lady business sewn up. It was no surprise that she was comfortable in front of the cameras - when you've been one of the world's top 20 supermodels, that's to be expected.

What couldn't be predicted, despite the male slathering that so often ensues when her name is mentioned, was just how crazy everyone would go for her. At a lunch for the charity the White Ribbon Alliance, high-ranking women fell over their feet to meet Bruni, comparing her excitedly to Jackie Kennedy. In the papers, she was variously described as looking "as demure as a convent girl" and "as demure as a virgin bride", while a Daily Mail reporter noted that "Carla would have won the star prize at her old Swiss finishing school for the expert curtsey she performed, lower than a bob but not a plunging drop which might have caused trouble with that elegant little skirt". The general mood was summed up in the image of Prince Charles leaning down to kiss her hand.

Flicking through the coverage of Bruni's first day, it was easy to forget that there had been other people at the events - including her own mother, Marisa Borini-Tedeschi, Sarkozy, and some old gal known as, what was her name again? Ah, yes, the Queen. Every picture seemed to focus on Bruni, until, if you squinted a bit, you would swear that there were armies of her marching across the papers. The Daily Mail ran no fewer than 17 pictures of her, including that naked pose on its front page, and close-ups of her feet, legs and hands inside. The Daily Telegraph wasn't far behind, with 12 photographs - including a front-page study of her gazing adoringly at Prince Philip, and a piece that asked whether she was the new Diana.

Bruni is pretty, of course - even if she was once described as looking like "a starving squirrel" - and the house of Dior has run up some lovely togs for her for this visit. But is the current obsession simply because of her looks, or is there more to it than that?
Kira Cochrane

The background

The new Mrs Sarkozy was born 40 years ago, in Turin, to Marysa Borini, a concert pianist, and Alberto Bruni Tedeschi, heir to Ceat, the second most-important Italian rubber company after Pirelli, until Pirelli bought it. (Last year it was claimed that she was actually the product of her mother's affair with another millionaire, Maurizio Remmert.) Her grandfather wrote operas, Tedeschi composed 12-tone music, and she has claimed that her childhood, much of which was spent in a centuries-old Piedmontese castle, included sing-alongs with Maria Callas and Herbert von Karajan. In 1973 the family, fearing kidnap by the Red Brigades, moved to France. She went to a Swiss finishing school, and was planning to study architecture in Paris when, at 19, she was deflected into modelling instead.

As a model she did well: she was once listed among the 20 richest supermodels, and in 1998, her last full year of work, made £7.5m. She was 22 when Eric Clapton took her to a Rolling Stones party, a decision he came to regret: days later, she began an affair with Mick Jagger, who had just had a daughter with Jerry Hall, his wife of two years.

"I cried myself inside out when Mick went off with Carla Bruni," Hall told an interviewer not long after. "I felt sick. It was unforgivable." ("Later on, of course," wrote Clapton in his memoir, "I quietly felt both gratitude and compassion towards [Jagger], first for delivering me from certain doom, and second for apparently suffering such prolonged agony in her service.")

She has been linked to Donald Trump, Kevin Costner, and the former French Socialist prime minister, Laurent Fabius; she was living with the publisher Jean-Paul Enthoven when she fell in love with his son, philosopher Raphael Enthoven, who was nearly a decade her junior. The wife he divorced to marry Bruni, philosopher Bernard Henry-Levy's daughter Justine Levy, wrote her fury into a bestselling roman à clef called Rien de grave (Nothing Serious), in which a woman who steals the protagonist's husband is called "a praying mantis" with "a Terminator smile". Her sister Valeria, for one, would not have been surprised. "When my sister wants someone," she once said, "she takes him." By the time they separated, they had a son, Aurélien, and she a second career as a musician.

According to the various rushed books, and the acres of newsprint that have been published about her relationship with Sarkozy, she saw him on TV in May and said to a friend sitting next to her: "I want to have a man who has nuclear power." Sarkozy in turn noticed her at an event for the French music industry and asked a friend to organise an intimate dinner at which she would be present. He was placed next to her and spoke to her all evening. "They amused themselves by imagining what would happen if they got together," wrote Paul-Eric Blanrue and Chris Laffaille in Carla and Nicolas: Chronicle of a Dangerous Liaison. "The astonished guests were quickly relegated to the rank of spectators." After dessert she is said to have asked Sarkozy if he had a car waiting outside; he did, and offered her a ride home. She invited him up for a coffee. "Never on a first date," the president apparently replied - sounding, in hindsight, a rather uncharacteristic note of caution.
Aida Edemariam

The fashion

The potential has always been there. Razor cheekbones, a supermodel frame, tonnes of cash and the boutiques of the Rue du Faubourg St Honoré primed to serve her. But until this week, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy has refrained from placing her high-quality sartorial cards on the table. That isn't to say that she has ever dressed badly; more that her quiet style has never been enough to merit such media attention - that is, until the fabulously chic Dior-fest that was this week.

Not everyone loved the demure dove-grey tailoring. Critics said it was too district nurse, too vintage air hostess, too prissy schoolgirl. But, in terms of style, dressing in a uniform way, or even role-playing with your wardrobe, isn't a weakness. It can indicate strictness, consistency and a great understanding of clothes.

And Bruni has already shown that she can role-play with her wardrobe masterfully. Consider her singer-songwriter look: leather jacket, vintage jeans, worn-in cotton shirts, often barefoot. It is 'le rock and roll' by numbers, a tribute to the uniform created by Jane Birkin - another woman who wasn't French, but who also successfully adopted Parisian style.

Incidentally, Bruni is also playing out the role of the Parisian rather well through her clothes. Her native, and often molto sexy, Italian labels have never been her thing. Instead, she has shown a preference for perennially stylish classics: crisp white shirts, V-neck cashmere jumpers, understated black coats. And while, sadly, we weren't privy to her Hermes wedding gown, it is unlikely that it would have been remotely fashiony.

Bruni has proved herself to be brilliantly consistent with the colour palette of her wardrobe. So far, she hasn't really strayed beyond the confines of midnight blue, grey, black, white and denim with the odd jolt of regal purple. And it's working. In fact, of all the recent pictures of her, only a shot in a purple one-shouldered evening dress stands out as being under par. The cut looks less sophisticated: the asymmetric chiffon looks déclassé, soap-starrish, even. You have to acknowledge that the French first lady is entirely right to stick with classics.

Some wardrobe detractors will say that the Bruni look is boring. And yes, as a supermodel, she never had much wardrobe sass about her. But for a president's wife, different rules apply. Safe can become stylish. Of course, Dior isn't a no-brainer label (remember the back-to-front Celine Dion suit?). It could have gone so badly wrong. But Carla chose wisely for the Windsor catwalk: classic pieces with just the right quota of on-trend detailing to lift them beyond boring. The verdict so far? Style by stealth.
Imogen Fox

The predecessors

There are so many unique ways in which you can describe someone, so many adjectives you can reach for to sum up their individual essence. But why bother when you can just compare them to someone else, however vague the resemblance? In the past few days, Carla Bruni has been compared to countless women, often on the basis of nothing more than a head tilt or a hat, including Princess Diana, Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn and Anne Boleyn.

The most common comparison has been with Jackie Kennedy, which has made it wearyingly clear just how long the press has been crying out for a very attractive political wife to bestow their kindnesses upon. Cherie Blair, high-ranking QC that she is, really let us down there. The comparison has been made largely on the basis of Bruni's outfits, especially the pillbox hat that she wore for a few hours on Wednesday. Some people commented that Bruni fell short of the Jackie Kennedy mark, and looked more like an air hostess. If one comparison doesn't quite work, reaching for a hoary old stereotype triumphs every time.

Nicolas Sarkozy is supposedly most fond of the Princess Diana comparison, and Bruni seems happy to pursue this too, speaking excitedly of humanitarian ambitions. Writing in the Daily Mail, Amanda Platell felt that Bruni had mastered Diana's early deference, but that ultimately she has more in common with Camilla, because neither woman's past "bears too close a scrutiny when it comes to fidelity". The Grace Kelly comparison boils down to the fact that, well, they're both pretty women who married powerful men. The Audrey Hepburn one turns on the fact that, well, they're both pretty women. The more you read, the more you realise that these comparisons are, indeed, extremely insightful.
Kira Cochrane

The music

For some, the sound of a sultry French accent trickling alongside an acoustic guitar is infinitely sexy, whatever the words or sentiment. But Carla Bruni's 2003 debut album, Quelqu'un m'a dit (Someone Told Me), which she recorded in her kitchen for £500, was rubbished in the French music press, to whom a sultry French accent is just, well, singing. Still, it sold more than 2m worldwide, including 1.2m in France, where it went to number five.

Daughter of a classical composer and a concert pianist, Bruni has had ample opportunity to distinguish good music from bad. The style of Someone Told Me tends toward the open-mic night - just Bruni and her guitar, making country-ish, acoustic folk music, but with very good hair. The sexiness outweighs the pretension, but only just.

I met Bruni last year, during an extensive press tour for No Promises, her languid collection of musical arrangements of poems by Emily Dickinson, Dorothy Parker, WH Auden and WB Yeats. She dropped little lines of poetry into our conversation about blouses and smoked very thin cigarettes. The album was released to wild reviews. "Less than a minute into Carla Bruni's second album," said Billboard, "you're just like the French president: hopelessly seduced." The Observer gave it four stars, claiming Bruni was "lovelier than Kate Moss - and better read", while The Word printed a photo of her in denim short-shorts with the headline, "All This And Talent Too!" It's true, she is very very beautiful, but the tone of some of the male critics verged on ejaculatory. They frothed like lusty hot-tubs.

Listening to her versions of Dickinson, Parker and Yeats, the first thought is that, surely, this is poetry for the unbeautiful. It's the stuff of loneliness, and rejection, for girls with thick ankles and glasses and hair that just won't settle. The second thought is that actually, it's quite nice, all French, and I wouldn't mind it on my iPod. But then, to me, Joe Le Taxi sounds classy.
Eva Wiseman

The gaze

Just look at the man-trapping stare that Carla Bruni has triumphantly brought to Britain. Show us how it's done, Carla.

As a basic foundation one needs to be ravishingly beautiful with large, lash-fringed eyes above a slightly parted mouth. If you lack the gorgeousness, you might resemble that deranged fan in the Stephen King novel Misery, who kidnaps a famous writer and amputates his foot.

If you direct all your attention at a man, you need to have a face that commands attention.

The Gaze tells an unlikely story, which men fall for every time. Witness Prince Philip in his gilded coach yesterday, as Carla turned on the 10,000-watt radiance. He sits back, as if hit by a stun gun. The Gaze says, "You, my darling desiccated duke, you, you could make me happy. Everything you say and do absorbs me. Look, I am smiling. And why? Because you are so witty, so handsome, so debonair in your overcoat. So what, you are married? Wives are easily disposed of."

In the Gaze, the face is mainly immobile. It is unnecessary to speak. The face speaks. The recipient of the Gaze interprets its language: my God, she fancies me! Then, alarmingly, the Gaze turns off, or away.

The sun is put out. The Gaze is directed to someone else. Yet how can that be, when it is me she loves?

Try practising the Gaze in front of a mirror, or on your pets. Take a good look at the goldfish. When you try this at home you'll find you're more likely to resemble a carp than Carla.
Linda Grant

The politics

Four inches and 13 years aren't the only differences between Carla and her new husband. While the president is proud of his rightwing credentials, she has long been known as a member of France's "gauche caviar" - a Left Bank champagne socialist. Sarkozy has appointed leftwing cabinet members to illustrate his "political openness" and he seems proud to carry the theme over into his personal life.

Before their whirlwind romance turned her into a perfectly dressed first lady, the Italian heiress was dismissive of Sarkozy's presidential bid, telling a Scottish newspaper that she preferred the socialist candidate, Ségolène Royal. "I really don't like her, but I would always vote on the left," she declared.

"My parents always did, too. It's like a tradition. I would never vote on the right." Alongside the rock stars and philosophers she has dated, she was once linked to France's Socialist former prime minister, Laurent Fabius.

Perhaps because of her own family's immigrant status, Carla also opposed Sarkozy's immigration policies. With her concert-pianist mother and tyre-magnate stepfather, she arrived in France aged five, after fleeing a wave of kidnappings and killings of businessmen in Turin. When it was suggested that immigrants whose family members wished to join their relatives in France should be DNA tested, she attended a concert set up to oppose the plan, and signed a petition against it.

Privately, Bruni has been known among friends to criticise Italy's Silvio Berlusconi. She is also passionate about the campaign in France to free the French-Colombian Ingrid Betancourt, who is being held hostage by the armed revolutionary group, Farc.

Sarkozy's second wife, Cécilia Ciganer-Albéniz, worked in communications and events organisation for his centre-right party and also had ambitions to run as mayor of Neuilly. But Carla is not a member of a political party. In contrast to Cecilia, who was lampooned after her husband sent her to Libya as an envoy to Muammar Gadafy as part of negotiations to free Bulgarian medical workers, Bruni is - for now - sitting back and leaving politics to her husband. "For the moment I am listening to what people tell me," she says, "That is how I see my role."
Homa Khaleeli

The French view

If you want to know what the French think of Carla Bruni - sorry, Madame Nicolas Sarkozy - don't read the celebrity press or any publications belonging to the president's buddies (among them Paris Match, Le Journal du Dimanche, Le Figaro): they have become Pravdaesque, unashamedly relaying the Elysée's PR message. Since his party's bleak defeat at the local elections two weeks ago, we've been told repeatedly that Carla was going to change the president. She has recently cut her hair shorter and featured in spread after spread, invariably demure and oh-so-modest in white shirts and grey cardigans. The woman who said only a few months ago that she was a polygamous kitten has now embraced monogamy and respectability with the passion of the newly converted, or so they say. Last summer, Cécilia Sarkozy was presented as Nicolas's Jackie Kennedy; Carla is supposed to be his Lady Di. Only the Elysée could think of such ridiculous nonsense. What are they going to brand the fourth Mrs Sarkozy? Nicolas's Lara Croft?

Why put up such a show when the French man on the street likes Carla Bruni-Sarkozy the way she is: une femme libre, self-assured, well-mannered, outspoken, bright and sexy. Leave Jackie to the Kennedys and Diana to the Windsors; what the French want is Carla au naturel. And they can rely on her to know how to behave in front of the Pope or the Queen of England: unlike her husband, she, for instance, knows that texting on one's mobile phone during an audience at the Vatican or patting Vladimir Putin on the shoulder is not in the best taste. She can also be relied on to promote French couture abroad, unlike Cécilia, who only wore Prada or Versace.

The love story between the French and Carla actually started long before she met her husband. Carla - or Carlita, as Nicolas Sarkozy calls his third wife - won over the French in the early 90s, first as a model but more recently as an artist; a nicely packaged artist, perhaps, but a singular new voice in French pop all the same. The French like her freedom and many long for the time when she tires of the pomp - and of Nicolas - and goes back home to write her first lady's experience into an album which they hope she will call Ooh La La, Nicolas! They can't wait.
Agnès Poirier

The Quotes

On monogamy

"I am a tamer of men, a cat, an Italian ... Monogamy bores me terribly ... I am monogamous from time to time but I prefer polygamy and polyandry."
Le Figaro, 2007

On modelling

"Even when I was having my hair and makeup done backstage at a fashion show, I would sneak in a copy of Dostoevsky and read it inside a copy of Elle or Vogue."
Independent, 2007

On Sarkozy

"I wanted to marry him straight away. People say it's gone too quickly. That's wrong: between Nicolas and me, it's not quick enough. You know lovers go at their own pace. Ours is up-tempo."
L'Express, 2008

On passion

"Love lasts a long time, but burning desire - two to three weeks."
Le Figaro, 2007

On herself

"I am proud and happy to be first lady of France. I will do my best ... I would like, while respecting the dignity of the position, to keep my personality ... I'm 40 years old, normal, serious, conscientious, simple, even if I'm privileged."
L'Express, 2008

On her heritage

"I like to be Italian. I like the Italian temperament and I like Italian food. French people are in a bad mood for some reason, and Italian people are in a good mood."
Daily Mail, 2007

On marriage

"I am of Italian culture and I would not like to divorce. I am therefore first lady until the end of my husband's term of office and his wife until death. I know that life can reserve surprises but that is my wish."
L'Express, 2008

On men

"I'm interested in accomplished people, people who have done a lot. I like hard workers. I don't like lazy men. Intelligence attracts me ... I like intense people ... people who don't want to be normal."
Daily Mail, 2007