Vanessa Paradis might be the glossy-haired, baby doll Chanel girl to the green-eyed forty-something Ivana wannabes who haunt the Paris fashion shows, but she's also a funky hippy chick with a wardrobe full of Afghan waistcoats and patchouli scented thrift store bell-bottoms. Oh, and a new album produced and written by Lenny Kravitz, out this autumn. Simon Mills says let Vanessa rule.

Vanessa Paradis looks even younger in the flesh. She doesn't even look old enough to be smoking. She barely looks old enough to be in a foreign country on her own; shouldn't she have a parent or something accompanying her at least? She really is tiny. Another half inch shorter and we'd be talking Kylie size. She has a little face, bee stung lips, endearing little gaps between her milky teeth you could drive a Citroen DS through and little breasts that hardly fill the junior sized bra she must be wearing. And then there's her wide, baby like forehead (Spike Lee's character in Do the Right Thing would describe it as a Sade forehead) and her soft, downy twist of hair, pulled into a little bun at the back of her head. She looks older (just) than the little girl in the Petit Filou ad on the telly.

But the little girls understand. Especially this one. Think about her name: Vanessa Paradis -- Vanessa Paradise. On one hand it sounds like the original inspiration for Maurice Chevalier's "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" and on the other it could be the name of a hooker or stripper. Back home she inspires lust in men, hatred from other women. Vanessa is the 19-year-old still singing "Joe le Taxi," the naive teenager drawling through Lou Reed's "Waiting for my Man" -- a song about scoring drugs, heroin even. Ask her about the lyrics and she'll say: "Well, sure it's about a drug dealer but you know it could also just be a song about a girl waiting for her boyfriend. It's up to you."

A version of this song appears on Vanessa's new album, her first ever English language recording. Another song is called "Lenny Kravitz." It's a jaunty little punk paean to the pierced nose and crushed velvet one's sexual attraction and inevitable infidelity. Vanessa sings it in her own saccharine, left Bank style, like she really manes it: "I know where I shouldn't be/You take my heart and drink it for tea/You mix me up and walk out of the door. You take my love and hurt me for more/But I've gotta have it/Watch out for the damage/From New York straight to Paris/I'm talking Lenny Kravitz." It goes on about Lenny doing it, "like a good man should" and you just can't believe that our Petit Filou Vanessa could write such stuff about a rotten womanizing cad like Lenny Kravitz. But actually, the joke's on you because Kravitz wrote the lyrics to "Lenny Kravitz" for Vanessa.

Meeting Lenny Kravitz has clearly had a dramatic effect on Vanessa Paradis' life. You just have to look at what she's wearing when she walks into the photographer's studio. Scuffed motorbike boots, a paisely, Suzy Wong style Chinese top, a few layers of ethnic jewelry and the most amazing bright purple crocheted fared trousers worn over black tights. And was that a whiff of patchouli oil? She might be the Chanel girl to millions of duty-free shoppers but in reality Vanessa Paradis is strictly a thrift store girl.

Lenny Kravitz has written and produced all the songs on Paradis' new album (except "Waiting for My Man). Musically it covers pretty much the same ground as one of his own albums; well observed and lovingly reproduced pastiches of instantly recognizable 60s and 70s rock, funk, and soul. Bacharach, Monkees, Beatles, Motown, Lou Reed, et al remodeled with a groovy contemporary edge and Lenny's inimitable swirly, New York attitude. On some tracks Vanessa sounds as good as Wendy and Lisa, on another she'll come on like a renegade Stock Aitken Waterman artiste. Whatever, hooking up with Lenny was a 24-track marriage made in studio heaven.

Lenny Kravitz first met Vanessa when he came by to watch her recording in Paris in April 1991. "I don't know why he came," shrugs Vanessa. "He just did." They disappeared to New York together to write songs and buy tank tops and naturally the French press started to talk. "People in France were saying that we were having an affair but that's complete bullshit. They think that because we were in New York together for eight months there must have been something between us. They tried to photograph us together all the time when we went back to Paris. They were on our asses all the time but we didn't let them near."

So are they an "item"?

"Lenny Kravitz is the sweetest, most wonderful person I have ever met. I never have so much fun as when I'm with him. I don't care if he has a reputation for women. People don't known what he is really like."

But are they having a "scene"?

"Lenny Kravitz is such a genius. He thinks about music all the time. Sometimes we'll be in a restaurant and I'll be talking to him and he won't reply and I'll look at him and he's in a trance and I'll say, 'Are you OK?' and he'll say 'Hold it, I'm just thinking of some lyrics.' He's amazing. People say he's a copyist but that's just the way he writes songs."

Lenny first caught sight of Vanessa on television when the video to her pervy Euro hit "Tandem" was enjoying heavy rotation on French TV networks. Directed by visual genius Jean Baptiste Mondino, the clip was a turning point in her career. After this video Vanessa Paradis would never be perceived as the "Joe le Taxi" girl again. "Making this little film was kind of a risk for both of us," recalls Mondino. "I mean I had never been particularly interested in her or her music. Like a lot of other people I thought she was just a nice little girl singing nice little songs. When I met her I become more involved. She was listening to Hendrix and The Velvet Underground -- the tape she gave me of her new album even had a version of Walk on the Wild Side on it." They decided to make a pretty wild video, too: all dazzling effects, ultra-rock imagery, supermodel Emma S wind milling a Fender guitar wearing nothing but silver PVC trousers and a sneer, Barry Kamen writhing suggestively against a mirrored pole, a pair of female twins hinting at lesbian incest and a close-up of a zip opening up. The song "Tandem" was written with the Bordeaux-sodden, romantic slouch of French crooner Serge Gainsbourg, had obvious sexual connotations as well. Strangely, Vanessa Paradis fails to see the significance in such a transformation.

"It was fantastic," says Mondino. "When we took the video to the record company they told us to change it. I said that only Vanessa was allowed to make any changes, which she didn't. Before that women were pulling her hair in the street because they thought she was precocious. Well, even Bridget Bardot had that problem. Men love that baby doll thing and women think it's stupid. Now she is even more threatening to women. Like Serge Gainsbourg once said, the reason women don't like Vanessa is because they know she could steal their boyfriends. You have to upset a few people and make them hate you if you want to be a real star."

Aged only 19, Vanessa Paradis has "done" France. She's worked with Gainsbourg, Jean Paul Goude, Mondino and Chanel. Now she's ready for the world. She's already clipping her Parisian accent into a gravelly mid-Euro/US Marlboro lights drawl, punctuated with the odd "fuck," "bullshit," and "ass." Her new album is terminally cool and once her rather extreme style of dressing reaches its natural equilibrium she could be quite something. Prince must be kicking himself.