If François Hollande has styled himself as Mr Normal – recently photographed buying fruit compote in a Paris supermarket and saying he would continue to do so after he's elected "if the fridge is empty" – his partner, Valérie Trierweiler, could revolutionise the unofficial role of France's first lady.

If, as she has promised, the 47-year-old journalist keeps her contract with the magazine Paris Match and continues to work, it would be the first time a president's partner has held down a regular job and salary. Her role as a journalist would make this juggling act even more tricky.

For 20 years, she covered French politics for Paris Match, and also recently hosted her own politics show on cable. During the early days of the campaign, she reconverted to the culture beat, arguing there was no conflict of interest with the arts world, although she was furious when Paris Match put her on its cover under the headline "Hollande's charming asset".

Carla Bruni, the millionaire heiress and former supermodel turned folksinger whose whirlwind marriage to Nicolas Sarkozy in office helped contribute to his record unpopularity, stepped back from her music career.

Although Sarkozy said she picked up her guitar to sing to him every night in her mansion west of Paris, where the couple preferred to live rather than the Elysée, she released only one album while French first lady which, although it sold well, was critically panned.

Trierweiler, a twice-divorced mother of three teenage boys who comes from a modest family in eastern France, said during the campaign she had to keep working to support her children, saying she does not want to be paid for by the state.

Bruni, who made more than £4m a year at the height of her supermodel fame, once posed for Vanity Fair in a haute-couture ballgown on the Elysée palace roof. But during the campaign, she tried to style herself and Sarkozy as "modest" types. She told a magazine she travelled round Paris on the metro incognito, wearing a wig.

Trierweiler has, like Hollande, styled herself as the antithesis of "bling" on the campaign trail. She says she buys clothes at the market, spends time searching for stray socks under her children's beds, and claims Hollande does the shopping and cooking and has an annoying habit of leaving cupboard doors open and never closing doors when he comes into the room. But, she argued, this habit showed he had "nothing to hide".