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Princess Grace's granddaughter Charlotte Casiraghi has got smarts, pedigree, and a penchant for horses. She also has a Gucci ad campaign, is a French Vogue vet, and isn't afraid to sue for invasive press coverage in tabloid magazines. This weekend's New York Times profile pegs her as more than a model, but less than a princess, and possibly too intelligent for fashion. We summarize below.
1. She's a commoner and she's pretty OK with it: Her uncle is Prince Albert II, but her father was common and so she escaped the princess title and everything it comes with. She told French Vogue, "I'm not a princess. My mother is, not I. I am the niece of the head of state. And with this status, I have some representational duties, nothing very constraining or very exceptional."
2. She's no model: Gucci describes her as the "protagonist" of the brand's ad campaign, and earlier this year she told French Elle she has "always refused to associate myself with a brand." Instead, the campaign "pays homage to the Gucci spirit, to 90 years of the history of the house, to our common passion for horsemanship. I do not represent any product or collection."
3. She probably just uses the campaign money to pay for her horses: Stéphane Berns, the French celebrity journalist speculates that "competing in horse competitions costs a lot of money [...] Gucci helps by writing checks with lots of zeros."
4. Diplomats have been known to lose their shit over how awesome she is/looks: The French ambassador to Monaco said, "She is a stunning, luminous person. She glows from the inside and radiates beauty and soft warmth."
5. She will sue you: Casiraghi won a civil court case in which the gossip weekly Paris Match had to pay a hefty fine and run "a large black and white banner across the bottom of the cover informing readers that it had been 'condemned' in civil court for violating her rights." The reason? They had run a cover article that featured photos of her leaving the comedic actor Gad Elmaleh's apartment along with the headline "The Amorous Weekend of the Princess and the Humorist."
6. She might be too smart for fashion: In Bern's words, "Honestly, it's rare to see someone so smart in this milieu. But there's a contradiction. She's so intelligent, and this is such a frivolous world."
· Independence From Monaco [NYT]
· Gucci Does Monaco [Racked]