of the jet-set and high society, and in the 1970s abandoned the image of "fashionable young girl about town" that Périer had created for her. An "it girl" and fashion icon, Hardy was considered the epitome of "the 'Modern Woman'" and of 1960s French chic and cool, known for her avant-garde and futuristic fashion choices. Brett Marie of PopMatters noted that "her sense of style and '60s-era model figure made her as much an icon of fashion as a music-business star." She recalled in 2008: "At the start of the 1960s, all of a sudden, my slender build, which made me so self-conscious, became fashionable." The singer began to be regarded as an "égérie" 'muse' by the top French fashion designers of the time, including André Courrèges, Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent. Hardy championed the first incarnation of Saint-Laurent's rupturist 1966 design Le Smoking. The designer recalled the time he took the singer to the Paris Opera dressed in one of his tuxedos: "People screamed and hollered. It was an outrage". She was also an early fan of Paco Rabanne, earning the Spanish designer popularity by wearing his creations for both photoshoots and television performances. Her 1968 photographs wearing a golden, metal minidress by Paco Rabanne—dubbed "the most expensive dress in the world" at the time— are now considered "legendary" and "perhaps her most iconic look". In 1968, Hardy told a reporter that: "If it weren't for the way I dress, no one would notice me". Likewise, she told Vanity Fair in 2018: "My songs had little interest compared to the Anglo-Saxon production. So I took it to heart to dress well every time I went to London or New York. I was above all a fashion ambassador." Hardy also modelled the creations of the nascent prêt-à-porter industry, a new wave of French female designers known as the "yé-yé school" or "the stylistes", who rebelled against the "strictures of haute couture". For instance, she helped launch the career of Sonia Rykiel by wearing her influential "poor boy sweater" on the cover of Elle, and was photographed by David Bailey wearing Emmanuelle Khanh's color-blocking coat for Vogue. Fashion Institute of Technology's Colleen Hill considers Hardy's style to be the most enduring out of all the yé-yé girls, noting that "her nonchalance is an important part of her appeal. Hardy's fashion choices, such as her white Courrèges pantsuits and Yves Saint Laurent's