For many years, she was the face of the Miss France competition, the show that honors the most beautiful woman in France. With her bright red lips, big hat, scarf and black-and-white suit, Geneviève de Fontenay was a familiar and instantly recognizable figure. La Dame au Chapeau passed away on the evening of Tuesday August 1. Her son Xavier told TF1/LCI that Geneviève de Fontenay died in her sleep, at around 11pm, of cardiac arrest. She was 90 years old.
For almost 60 years, Geneviève de Fontenay ruled the Miss France pageant. Elected "Miss Elegance" in 1957, the young Balenciaga model found her vocation in this women's competition. In 1981, the former Miss took over as head of the Miss France Committee, transforming this small competition into an ever-growing company.
She stepped down in 2010, following a series of disagreements with Endemol, the production company that organizes the pageant. For Geneviève de Fontenay, Miss France had become " vulgar ", and values had changed: "There's no longer any equality between candidates who are not dressed in the same way. I have nothing to do with that anymore. With us, the girls wore the same dresses, and we showcased the real folk costumes of the regions represented," she told Ouest France in 2020.
As early as 2011, Geneviève de Fontenay tried to create her own beauty pageant, with Miss Nationale, then Miss Prestige National, but without success. After 2015, the lady in the hat gradually withdrew from public life.
Geneviève de Fontenay's fame was also due to her often brutal frankness, and her social positions deemed backward and conservative. The former Miss shocked the world by speaking out against marriage for all, homoparentality, GPA and PMA. On Jean-Marc Morandini's show, she was also very virulent against transgender people. To the idea of a transgender woman taking part in Miss France, she replied: " I will never accept that the title of Miss France be tainted with transgender.Transgender is really something unnatural."
With her passing, a whole era of French television is gone. Tributes are pouring in on television and on social networks. Geneviève de Fontenay will be buried in Paris, in her family vault.
