When the death of Brigitte Bardot was announced on December 28th, 2025, the internet filled with tributes to her and her 21-year entertainment career. Stills from her films flooded social media platforms, charting her evolution into the cultural icon and sex symbol she became known as. There, at age 18, sprawled in a field with a daisy in her mouth. At the beach. On horseback. Her signature blonde locks ranged from classic ’50s rolls, to heavily-teased beehive, to tousled, looser layers, all optimally framing the cat-eye liner with which she also became synonymous. Her approach to her own style, which combined elements of high glamour with moments of more minimal, relaxed styling, epitomized the era and was a fundamental inspiration for today’s so-called ‘French-girl chic’ aesthetic.

“This is not the first time that the fashion world has been forced to wrestle with the legacy of a controversial individual”

Even indie pop darling Chappell Roan acknowledged her death, revealing that the actress had inspired her hit song Red Wine Supernova; it opens with the line “she was a playboy, Brigitte Bardot”. However, shortly after posting her thanks, she was forced to retract her statement, saying that she “did not condone […] all that insane shit Ms. Bardot stood for.” Why? After retiring from the film industry in the early ’70s, she became a vocal supporter of far-right politics. These extremist political beliefs, which manifested themselves in outbursts against the LGBTQ+ community, #MeToo activists (who Bardot deemed “hypocritical, ridiculous, [and] uninteresting”) immigrants, and Muslims, ultimately led her to be fined five times for “inciting racial hatred”. So prolific a bigot was she that, in her fifth prosecution for the same crime, the prosecutor even shared that she was “a little tired of prosecuting Ms. Bardot”. Nonetheless, these comments did not prevent President Emmanuel Macron from declaring her a “generational treasure”, a statement that was not met without some criticism. Equally, what other word is there for a cultural figure so closely associated with France that she was chosen as the model for the figure of Marianne de la République, an official symbol of the French Republic seen on coins and displayed in government buildings?

This is not the first time that the fashion world has been forced to wrestle with the legacy of a controversial individual and it certainly won’t be the last. So, as Bardot’s lasting legacy continues to be shaped, perhaps it would be useful to consider how fashion has dealt with the memory of other successful but highly complex personalities.

“Space was still made to reckon with the actions of the individual responsible for these creations”

After all, let us not forget Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel. While she radically reinvented women’s fashion, dropping waistbands and slashing hemlines, Chanel was also a Nazi collaborator, using her connections for personal gain. Though evidence suggests that she initially utilised her relationships with Nazi officials in order to rescue her nephew from a German prison camp, she continued to engage with the regime when it benefitted her, later attempting to weaponize the Vichy laws against her Jewish business partners in order to regain total ownership of the Chanel brand. However, recent efforts to understand Chanel’s wartime actions have been complicated by the discovery of documents that suggest her possible involvement with the French Résistance, though the validity of these documents has been disputed by historians. In the V&A’s 2024 Chanel exhibit retrospective, which traced the brand’s evolution from 1910 through to the present day, documents evidencing both Chanel’s Nazi and Résistance ties were placed next to one another, acknowledging the contradictory nature of her legacy. Since the truth surrounding her actions is so unclear, this allowed the visitor to examine the existing evidence and form their own impression of her legacy. In the midst of an exhibit devoted almost entirely to a single figure and brand, space was still made to reckon with the actions of the individual responsible for these creations. In doing so, the curators seemed to signal that, while tightly intertwined, one can appreciate someone’s creative output while still acknowledging the creator’s complicated personality.

“Others had remembered the designer more for his behaviour than his clothes”

This concept was also the rationale behind the 2023 Met Gala, a celebration of Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld’s career. Though his death prompted tributes from figures ranging from Donatella Versace to Courtney Love, others had remembered the designer more for his behaviour than his clothes. Lagerfeld was known for his fatphobic comments, criticising women such as Adele, Pippa Middleton, and Heidi Klum for what he saw as their excessive weight. He dismissed the concerns of #MeToo survivors, telling women not to model if they didn’t want their “pants pulled about”. Though Anna Wintour clarified that the event’s focus was on his career, frequent allusions to elements of his personal life (most memorably Jared Leto’s outfit, who attended in a life-sized cat costume as Lagerfeld’s cat, Choupette) suggested that the designer’s incorporation of his personality into his brand had made the two inextricable from one another.

In commemorating his legacy in such an extravagant manner, Lagerfeld’s life, with all its complexities and nuances, was brought to the forefront; viewers and guests alike were forced to reckon with his behaviour and its (lack of) consequences. Ultimately, a legacy is not created overnight, nor is it permanent. It is a fluid thing, and depends entirely on those still living. So, though it is important to acknowledge the pain behind the clothes, perhaps instead of attempting to remember figures in absolutes, we should adopt a greater degree of nuance in our attempts to understand the individuals around us, both living and dead.