The Girls of Paris

There s a nouvelle vague of French beauties, with brains and talent to spare, about to hit these shores. TATIANA DE ROSNAY and CHARLA CARTER sing their praises

Laurence Treil (opposite page): Six feet in her size11 bare feet, she is literally larger than life. Three years after switching from babysitting to modeling in order to finance her drama studies, the twenty-year-old Treil is now working as an actress and singer. In her first film, to be released this year, she plays a devilish modern-day Delilah, and she's just finished recording her first single, after a three-month stint as a backup singer for Bryan Ferry. Clearly Treil's ambition is as far-reaching as her bone structure.

MarHie Lagache (left): Pouring her more-thangenerous curves into slinky sequined dresses as well as demure Chanel suits, twentyfour-year-old Lagache pitches everything from Perrier to Yoplait to television and movie audiences around the world. Off-earnera, she inhabits the smoky underground of Parisian nightclubs, a far cry from her surroundings as a pious suburban schoolgirl. "At night, " Lagache purrs, "tout est possible!" A graduate of Paris's wacky fashion-design school, Le Cours Bergot, Lagache firmly believes that "looks aren't so important nowadays. What counts is personality. "

Jessica Forde(right): "Hitler," replies the twenty-one-year-old actress when asked what role she'd like to play next. So far, Forde s incarnated a world-weary Parisienne in Eric Rohmer'sReinette et Mirabelleand a distraughtfille de bonne famillewith an unreasonable passion for the maid's son in Laurent Perrin's Bronte-esque Buisson Ardent."But I'd like to play the bad guy for once, " Forde complains. Right now the French-English starlet is being shaken around like a newfound bone in the Paris media's mouth. No wonder: her clear-eyed enthusiasm sets her apart from France's current crop of pouting baby Bardots, whose unabashed anatomies stand in for their lack of talent.

Jenna de Rosnay (right):Twenty-four-year-old Jenna de Rosnay, nee Severson, was a sweet-sixteen Maui surfer girl when dashing Baron Arnaud de Rosnay made her his baronne.But Jenna set her sights beyond her windsurfing world record after Arnaud's tragic disappearance at sea in 1984; recently, she's triumphed with her own line of beachwear and recorded her first album while raising her three-year-old daughter, Alize {"Trade Wind"). Behind that body burns sheer ambition.