Statue of Carla Bruni as a worker angers France

A French mayor’s plan to erect a statue of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s former supermodel wife Carla Bruni in worker’s attire has angered the opposition and embarrassed the first lady.

Jacques Martin, mayor of Nogent-sur-Marne, in the eastern suburbs of Paris, and a member of Sarkozy’s UMP party, commissioned the statue to honour the mostly Italian immigrant women who used to work at a feather factory in the town.

But when French daily Le Parisien revealed the plan for the statue more than two metres tall, at a cost of over €80,000, the opposition and even the first lady’s friends were up in arms.