Watch Carla Bruni at an official dinner gala at the Elysee Palace

Haute couture meets high politics. The French president’s state visit to London will seem like a fashion parade as Nicolas Sarkozy breezes into town this week with his glamorous wife and a cluster of female ministers who have brought their chic wardrobe into the cabinet.

Dressed in Dior for the occasion, Carla Bruni, the super-model and singer who married the French leader last month, is expected to steal the show, but other “Sarko babes” will be doing just as much for French style and fashion at a sumptuous banquet to be hosted by the Queen at Windsor Castle on Wednesday.

“We are being royally received,” a senior French official said last week, “and we will do everything possible to show that we are equal to it.”

The female contingent in the cabinet was built up by Sarkozy in the interests of sexual equality and appears to follow him virtually everywhere since his election last May.

It includes Rama Yade, the secretary of state for human rights, who at 31 is the youngest member of the “rainbow government” team and is known for her model good looks; Rachida Dati, the 42-year-old justice minister, who has raised eyebrows by posing in designer outfits in her office for glossy magazines; Christine Lagarde, the elegant, 52-year-old minister of finance; and Michèle Alliot-Marie, 61, the interior minister, of whom the previous president, Jacques Chirac, once said: “She has the best legs in the party”.

How can Britain possibly compete with that?

Dame Judi Dench, the leading lady of British theatre, is being wheeled out for a lunch hosted by Sarah Brown, the prime minister’s wife, for the French first lady on Thursday at Lancaster House. The idea is to highlight the global scourge of maternal mortality. Diana Quick, the actress, is also expected.

Having helped to sell everything from instant coffee to Lancia cars, Bruni, 40, has said she wants to get involved in “humanitarian work” and Betsy McCallan of the White Ribbon Alliance, an organisation committed to lowering maternal mortality — and of which Sarah Brownis the patron — said “we are morethan happy to have her aboard”.

Bruni’s priority for the moment, however, is the more delicate operation of boosting the French president’s stock after his catastrophic drop in the polls. The “Carla strategy”, as French newspapers call it, has featured the Italian in the role of what one called “a high-precision weapon” for helping to give “Sarko” a more dignified image.

She has put away her guitar, for the time being at least, to pose as a traditional first lady for glossy magazines.

The combative Sarkozy had been accused of undermining the solemnity of his office with ill-advised antics and will be on his guard in London against man-handling the Queen, picking fights with members of the public or being caught by cameramen in his running shorts.

Bruni is also on best behaviour. She is said to have been learning to curtsey in preparation for meeting the Queen and told Paris Match: “I am preparing arduously.”

Both sides have hailed the event as an opportunity to demonstrate how much relations have improved since the days of Chirac, who is famous for losing his temper with Tony Blair and generally insulting Britain by saying: “One cannot trust people whose cooking is so bad.” The Queen took her revenge on Chirac during his last state visit to Britain by serving him Windsor soup in the Waterloo Chamber, which commemorates one of France’s most humiliating defeats.

For all his reputation as a parvenu addicted to “le bling bling” — designer sunglasses, expensive watches and the jets of billionaire friends — the plain-spoken Sarkozy, 53, might be more to her liking than his imperious predecessor.

Sarkozy admires Britain’s low unemployment rate and flexible job market, which have lured so many young French workers — including one of his former wife’s daughters — to London. He has repeatedly held up Britain as an example for France to follow if it is to keep up with the rest of Europe amid globalisation.

At the same time, cooling relations with Germany have given impetus to Sarkozy’s plans for an Anglo-French axis to help drive European Union policy and reform international institutions.

“We want a new Franco-British fraternity for the 21st century,” said the French official. “Of course there are differences, and thank heavens, how boring it would be to discuss things otherwise; but the so-called French-German ‘motor’ [of Europe] is not enough. Let’s transform our differences into agreement.” British officials were just as optimistic. “Seldom has there been a time when Britain and France agree on so many issues,” said one.

There was talk of more cooperation in the nuclear field, too, after the government’s decision to approve a new generation of atomic power plants in Britain. Sarkozy was expected to press Brown to go ahead with the planned construction of Anglo-French aircraft carriers and to buy a new French armoured vehicle for the army rather than one built in Britain.

— Sarkozy was said to have demanded a list of “treacherous” friends who were attending the marriage of Cécilia, his former wife, in New York today. A party at the Connecticut home of Richard Attias, her fiancé, was to be followed by an outing to the Broadway musical Mamma Mia.

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