Michelle and Carla finally meet

Michelle Obama and Carla Bruni came face-to-face today in Strasbourg, sending the paparazzi into a frenzy and fashion journalists into overdrive.

As their husbands met ahead of the Nato summit, the US First Lady of fashion met her French counterpart on the steps of Strasbourg's Rohan Palace. Carla Bruni had not accompanied Nicolas Sarkozy on his trip to London for the G20 Summit, sparking rumours that the former model was keen to avoid a fashion face-off with Michelle Obama, who has emerged as a contender for Bruni’s crown as a style icon. But if Bruni was at all nervous in her meeting with Obama, she hid it well, welcoming the Obamas to Strasbourg in a chic grey belted dress, complete with pussybow collar.
 
For her part Michelle Obama wore a black knee-length coat that was embroidered with a pink floral pattern and ruched and tied at the neck.

The Sarkozys and Obamas lunched together at the Rohan Palace, next to the Cathedral in Strasbourg.  It is not known what the Sarkozys elected to serve their American guests - but former French President Jacques Chirac's favourite dish from the Alsace region was tete de veau: a delicious dish of calves brains.

After the meal the two presidents headed across the border to Baden-Baden in Germany for the Nato summit, leaving their wives to get acquainted.

It isn't known what Carla has laid on to keep Michelle Obama entertained while in Strasbourg. Sarah Brown took Michelle on a tour of an inner-city comprehensive school and a cancer charity while she was in London.

She went down a storm in the capital, and showed herself to be a true role model as she told pupils at the Islington girls school that the world needed strong young women to pave the way for the future. She spoke of her own working-class upbringing in the Southside disctrict of Chicago and said she was "an example of what is possible when girls from the very beginning of their lives are loved and nurtured by people around them".

Given well-heeled Strasbourg's impressive array of fashion boutiques along with Carla Bruni's background - a spot of retail therapy rather than social work may be the order of the day.

 ·