Jean Seberg changed the way we think about clothes.
Before she burst onto the scene with Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 classic film Breathless, silver-screen stars were simply not spotted in everyday clothes. Hollywood meant high-octane, polished glamour; what the A-list wore to go about their day-to-day lives was rarely captured on camera. Seberg upended all that with her relaxed, youthful aesthetic that became the benchmark for today’s much emulated Parisian-woman style.
Rightly or wrongly given her latter activism and acting prowess, her look will become the subject of fascination again this month with the release of Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague, which reimagines the making of Breathless, starring Zoey Deutsch as the American ingenue who took Paris by storm. “Her every movement is graceful, each glance is precise,” wrote François Roland Truffaut in 1958, who created the original film treatment for Breathless. “The shape of her head, her silhouette, her walk, everything is perfect; this kind of sex appeal hasn’t been seen on the screen”.
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It’s hard to overstate the impact Seberg had on culture and style. Audrey Hepburn might have been the first to put pixie crops on the map, but it was Seberg who made them fresh and cool. That’s not to discredit Hepburn, but it was Seberg’s pairing of it with clothes that were nonchalant and low-key that created such a stir. Parisian women filed to hairdressers requesting ‘la coupé Seberg’. Her style was androgynous and liberated, and a direct reaction against the most restricted, coiffed and often corseted styles that were still de rigeur. Even if you aren’t familiar with her name or the 30 films that she made over the course of her short life, you’ll recognise her boyish image – minimal make-up, Peter Pan collars, chunky Aran knits, boyfriend shirts, striped tops, T-shirts and cropped, straight-leg trousers and loafers or ballet pumps. Despite her American roots, her wardrobe came to define a modern Parisian uniform.
“Jean Seberg activated everyday dress as a symbol of intellectual and urban freedom,” says Caroline Stevenson, Director of Centre for Fashion Curation at London College of Fashion, UAL. “What she wore distanced her from traditional femininity and sexuality. She transformed simplicity, androgyny and ordinariness into enduring stylistic signs of modernity and freedom, and she established the idea of Parisian ‘effortless style’ – a casual but feminine look that operates across a variety of social worlds. She was casual, yet precise and polished without trying too hard”.
Aubry Dullin as Jean-Paul Belmondo and Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg in Nouvelle Vague. Courtesy of Netflix
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What we wear of course says a lot about who we are and what we stand for, and for Seberg her clothes represented the stripped back visual language of French New Wave, as well as the decade’s focus on youth and rebellion. Her look proved her as a free-thinker, who didn’t play by society’s rules. London wasn’t the only city that was ‘swinging’ during the 60s; in Paris, youth subcultures challenged the reign of couture and the capital was flooded with Bohemia and creative intellectualism. The rise of Seberg predates the French capital’s student protests of 1968, and also yé-yé music, a mix of French chanson and rock ’n’ roll, largely led by stylish young women including Francoise Hardy and Sylvie Vartan. “Her clothing in Breathless could be described as anti-fashion, especially compared to the extravagance of Hollywood cinema of the time,” says Stevenson. “It signified a sense of freedom, but it also complicated the role of the female in cinema – her style defied easy categorisation making her character more intriguing. In many scenes she wore her own clothes, which embodied the bold, fresh and unconventional context of French New Wave Cinema”.
Seberg is still a much cited inspiration among countless designers, from Parisian style bastion Agnes B to Rodarte, Chanel and A.P.C. Her influence can be seen in the style choices of Alexa Chung, a young Madonna and Léa Seydoux. But Seberg was far from just a passive muse (are any women?); acting aside, she was a life-long political activist, who a few years after finding fame with Breathless, became disenchanted with Hollywood, and got involved in the Black Panther movement. “Something in me is not equipped to be in America and play those games, selling yourself over martinis, being charming and gay and bright. It’s not worth the fight,” Seberg told the New York Times in 1974. “They always transform you into everything you aren’t”.
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The FBI disapproved of her financial and vocal support of the organisation, and began a campaign of harassment and intimidation, culminating in a fake news story alleging that Seberg was pregnant not with her husband’s child, but the baby of a member of the Black Panthers. Due to extreme emotional distress, the actress and campaigner went into early labour and the baby died two days later. Her mental health fell into decline and Seberg took her own life nine years later, aged 40. “There is a tendency to remember female stars for fashion and looks over talent or intellect. It’s a systemic issue: male actors are far less likely to be reduced simply to what they wore. Seberg’s fame is unfortunately caught in an age-old gendered lens of evaluation. She was deeply involved in civil rights activism and politically engaged cinema, but these aspects of her life are sidelined in favour of her looks and her style,” says Stevenson.
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Zoey Deutch as Jean Seberg in Nouvelle Vague Courtesy of Netflix
Seberg was more than the clothes she wore; she was a passionate, informed participant in culture and politics. Underneath her courage and strength of character, she was also insecure and vulnerable. Her wardrobe matters in that it was a vehicle, armour even, for her beliefs and philosophy. While she herself was restrained by multiple forces during her lifetime, she told women that we are not just one thing, which is perhaps her greatest influence of all.
Nouvelle Vague is out in cinemas from 30 January
Ella Alexander is Citizen Femme’s fashion features editor. She started her career at the Evening Standard, and has since held senior editorial roles at Vogue, The Independent and Harper’s Bazaar, where she remains a contributing editor. She also writes for The Telegraph, Sunday Times Style, Service95 and CNN. She is an author, having co-written Dame Zandra Rhodes’ memoir, Iconic: My Life In Fashion In 50 Objects, published by Transworld in July 2024. Her favourite travel destination is Catania, Sicily’s second city.
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