she would like and she chose a guitar, with which she began to sing her own melodies. Following her mother's orders, she enrolled in the Paris Institute of Political Studies while still a teenager. Considering it too challenging, she quickly left the institution and joined the Sorbonne to study German. Hardy used the time left from her courses to devote herself to composing songs on her guitar. She began to test her repertoire on the small stage of venue Moka Club, also known as Club des mordus, where she performed every Thursday "in front of an audience of retirees". Around this time, she auditioned for record label Pathé-Marconi after reading an ad in France-Soir. Although she was rejected, Hardy was impressed that she had held the directors' attention for longer than she expected. She also felt encouraged after hearing her recorded voice, which she found "less off-key and tremulous than [she] feared". The aspiring singer then went to Philips Records, where she was recommended to take singing lessons. Following this advice, Hardy joined Le Petit Conservatoire de la chanson in 1961, a school for radio performers—the first of its kind in France—led by singer Mireille Hartuch. Originally launched as a radio program in 1955, the Petit Conservatoire was turned into a popular TV show beginning in June 1960. When a student gave a satisfactory performance, they were given the chance to release it on the radio, or even perform it again for television. Hartuch—who was known to be very selective—accepted Hardy right away, recalling in 1966: "The first time Françoise entered the classroom to audition, I didn't know if she sang, if she played guitar, what she was doing, I just looked and felt like there was a spark, something that lit up." They developed a "mother-daughter relationship" and a long friendship based on mutual esteem. Music career 1961–1963: Career breakthrough On 14 May 1961, Hardy auditioned for the French label Disques Vogue, where was received by directors Serge Goron and Léo Vidaly, who recommended that she take music theory and harmony lessons with a pianist. Her good looks impressed Vogue sound engineer André Bernot—feeling that she "would make a nice record cover"—who offered to teach her some rudiments of music theory in order to improve her sense of rhythm. Bernot later recorded a four-track demo with her, which he submitted to Jacques Wolfsohn, the most influential director at Vogue.