A new Princess Di?

What happened

The British press showered French first lady Carla Bruni with praise as she arrived in London and overshadowed her husband, President Nicolas Sarkozy, during a state visit this week. (BBC News)

What the commentators said

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British tabloids are so fickle, said Paul Majendie in Reuters. “The day after splashing pictures of her naked” on the front page, the British press swooned and crowned Bruni “as a fashion queen who could be the new Princess Diana.”

“Not since Jackie Kennedy wowed British society on her first visit to London in 1962 has the arrival of a First Lady triggered so much hype,” said Andrew Pierce in the London Daily Telegraph. Bruni—a model, turned pop star and poet—knew “all eyes would be on her.” She won everyone over the second she stepped off the plane wearing “an elegant Christian Dior grey coat cinched at the waist by a thin, black belt and a French style beret. It was the beautiful wife at the court of Camelot all over again.”

Bruni-Sarkozy certainly looked like Jackie O, said Robin Oakley in CNN.com. Or, as one British fashion writer put it, “like a cross” between Jackie and “a French schoolgirl.” It’s certainly clear that the thing everyone will remember about her visit will be her “grace and the demure outfits she chose,” rather than the pictures of her in her birthday suit. “She came. She curtsied. She conquered.”