Agnès Souret
Agnès Souret, (1902-1928) was a French actress and dancer who was the winner of the inaugural Miss France competition in 1920.
Biography
Jeanne Germaine Berthe Agnès Souret was a French-Basque born in Biarritz south-western France on January 21, 1902. Her early life is not well documented. She was the daughter of a former ballet dancer Mauguerite Souret and her grandfather was Henri Souret, a customs official in the town of Bidarray. Souret’s formative years were spent at Espelette in the Basque province of Labourd.
La plus belle femme de France
In 1919, the dark brown haired, brown eyed Agnès Souret was the winner of a beauty competition to become Miss Midi-Pyrénées. In 1920, she was acclaimed the most beautiful woman in France (La plus belle femme de France) in a contest now regarded as the inaugural Miss France competition. The seventeen-year-old Souret won over 2000 entrants and attracted 115,000 votes. In Le Figaro, she was described as a ‘’dazzling beauty’’. In the New York Times, she was called ‘‘the fairest in France’’ At 1.68 m tall, she was relatively slight by the beauty queen standards of the late 20th century.
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