I came across not long ago this interview that Carla gave to Vogue just after being First Lady for a year. I found it quite interesting and it has a lovely photo on the cover of Carla with one of her puppies.

Here's the bits that caught my attention about Carla, but it's definitely worth a read!

On lifestyle:

"I have an austere temperament," she says. "There are things that give me no pleasure: objects, clothes, jewelry. I've worn them all, but all that stuff interferes with my daily life." She does her own hair. According to her friend Farida Khelfa, "Carla hates shopping and would wear the same pair of trousers every day if she could." Makeup doesn't interest her—"It takes forever and doesn't make you look better after 30." A beauty at 41, she looks a little like a cat, a little like her mother, a little like an actress during rehearsal: all there, no facade.

About life changes when she married Sarkozy:

"It opened my eyes. Before, I lived in a privileged bubble. My view of the world was constructed in a life where I never saw real action, only listened to a lot of words, and words spoken by people who live in Saint-Germain des Près. There's a big difference between the intellectuals of the Café Flore and people who actually have power, between thought and action. Thought can be free, but action is never free—it has to deal with reality."

On her impact on Sarkozy:

"Sarkozy was perceived as a man without much culture when Carla came on the scene. She drags him to desperately abstract plays that he sleeps through, but he's thrilled; she makes him watch DVDs of foreign films in the original language; she's made him into the kind of man intellectuals can be seen with. She ennobled him; she made him elegant."