The Birkin Bag is the ultimate status symbol: wildly costly, ridiculously onerous to get and instantly identifiable. Actual Housewives gather it, hip-hop artists rap about it and “Intercourse and the Metropolis” as soon as devoted an episode to it.
But, in line with Marisa Meltzer’s new biography, “It Girl: The Life and Legacy of Jane Birkin” (Atria Books, out Tuesday), the girl who impressed the dear Hermés purse was the last word bohemian — and a scandalous one at that.
She was condemned by the Vatican for her racy music, had three youngsters with three completely different males and nonetheless managed to keep out all evening partying in her signature mini clothes (typically with a child in tow).
“The time period ‘It Lady’ is a shorthand for her distinctive model of fame,” Meltzer writes, “however it’s just the start of who Jane Birkin actually was.”
Born to a creative however respectable London household, Birkin was a wayward adolescent. Her classmates in boarding faculty made enjoyable of her skinny physique and flat chest, and she or he tried to run away a pair occasions.
Her dad and mom despatched her to Paris for six months when she was 16, and she or he got here again modified. She obtained bangs, purchased a bunch of mini skirts and dove headlong into London’s Sixties Youthquake motion
At 17, she landed her first appearing gig, after strolling into the fallacious theater for an audition. By 18, she had a supporting function within the musical “Ardour Flower Resort,” and had married the play’s songwriter John Barry — although he was 30 and had two youngsters from a earlier marriage.
Birkin’s household didn’t approve. However she was in love: She wore a white crochet mini gown to the marriage.
Barry handled her with merciless indifference, and she or he nervous that he didn’t discover her engaging anymore.
“She slept with an eyeliner pencil beneath her pillow so she might apply some at any second,” Meltzer writes. “She had fallen for the fairy-tale excellent of romance and marriage, and because of this closed off her personal sense of self.”
By 21, she was divorced, and struggling to afford diapers for her toddler daughter, Kate Barry, born in April of 1967. When she heard of an appearing alternative in Paris, she determined a change of surroundings would do her good and returned to the Metropolis of Lights.
That’s the place she met actor/musician Serge Gainsbourg.
A provocateur and playboy, he was 40-years-old, twice-divorced and had simply ended a romance with the blonde bombshell Brigitte Bardot when he and Birkin started filming “Slogan.”
The 2 butted heads at first, however their chemistry of their scenes collectively was simple. The movie’s director took them out to storied Parisian restaurant Maxime so the 2 stars might reconcile their variations. After dinner, Gainsbourg took Birkin to a nightclub, and she or he discovered his awkward, shy demeanor on the dancefloor endearing.
“I understood that each one this stuff I had seen as aggression had been actually simply protection mechanisms of somebody infinitely too delicate, terribly romantic, with a tenderness and sentimentality that nobody might think about existed,” she later wrote.
They stayed out all evening. When filming wrapped in August 1968, Birkin nabbed one other movie function, within the French thriller “La piscine.” She determined not to return to London and to remain in Paris with Gainsbourg.
Their whirlwind romance lasted 13 years. In 1969, they launched their first tune collectively, “Je t’aime … moi non plus” (“I really like you … me neither”), which consisted primarily of Birkin cooing “I really like you, I really like you, Oh God I really like you!” and moaning in orgasmic ecstasy.
Rumors swirled that the pair really had intercourse whereas recording it. It went to No. 1 in France and England, and even charted within the US. The BBC banned it. The pinnacle of Birkin’s and Gainbourg’s Italian label went to jail for it. The Vatican denounced it, which solely elevated the file’s attract. (“The pope has been our greatest publicist,” Birkin commented on the time.)
Pictures of Birkin and Gainsbourg flitting about city, she in her mini skirts and carrying a basket, he in his denim shirts unbuttoned to his navel and toting Birkin’s younger daughter, had been plastered throughout newsstands. They rode the infamy to the Cannes premiere of “Slogan” that spring. Birkin wore a sheer black frock that stopped “about two inches under her crotch,” Meltzer writes, and no bra.
She had a toddler with him, future actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, in 1971. Whereas pregnant, she posed topless for Gainsbourg’s 1971 album “Historie of Melody Nelson,” in denims and holding her personal childhood stuffed monkey over her rising stomach.
They had been true bohemians, taking their youngsters out to nightclubs, child Charlotte sleeping in Birkin’s signature wicker basket. Typically, they’d exit with out the children, placing them to mattress and coming again in time to wake them up at 7 a.m. to take them to highschool. Then they slept until 2 p.m. Birkin as soon as picked Charlotte up from faculty in a skin-tight blue sequin gown.
Birkin was loopy about Gainsbourg, however his relentless way of life (to not point out his alcoholism) started to take a toll on her. Plus, he was jealous and possessive. He carried a gun round certainly one of her movie units, in case anybody ought to attempt to make a transfer on her. “You’re mine and I’ll kill anybody who tried to take you away,” he advised her. Even he admitted himself to hitting her on at the very least one event.
She finally left him for one more man, movie director Jacques Doillon, who gave her her first substantial movie function (1981’s “The Prodigal Daughter”) and her third little one, Lou Doillon. They lasted a couple of decade till he cheated on her with one other actress.
In 1983, she discovered herself subsequent to Hermés CEO Jean-Louis Dumas on a flight from Paris to London. For many years, Birkin had toted her belongings in her large wicker basket: It was her signature merchandise, establishing her as a vogue maverick in her adopted France.
However on that day, her pockets, keys, cigarettes and diapers saved spilling out. Her seatmate requested why she didn’t carry a bag with pockets, and when she mentioned she couldn’t discover one to her liking, he requested what that will seem like.
Birkin rapidly sketched a trapezoidal purse with two handles on the again of a barf bag, and Dumas mentioned he would make it for her. A 12 months later, the Birkin Bag was born and Birkin herself began carrying it together with her in every single place.
She caught stickers on its black-leather floor; hung keychains and beaded doo-dads from its fraying handles; and stuffed it to the gills.
As Birkin grew older, she sought to flee her ingenue id. In 1988, as her 40s approached, Birkin was embarking on her first solo live performance tour. She was nonetheless shut with Gainsbourg and nonetheless carried out his music, and he requested her what gown she would put on for the event. She mentioned she didn’t wish to put on a gown. He requested how she would put on her hair, then. She borrowed a pair of his nail scissors and gave herself a pixie reduce. She ended up performing in males’s trousers, a white tank high and an outsized button-down — a glance that will change into iconic.
In the meantime, she carried her namesake bag together with her in every single place till 1994 when she donated the scuffed, stained accent to an AIDs charity public sale.
She died in 2023 on the age of 76, after years of well being points and the deaths of many family members, together with her oldest daughter Kate in 2013, in an obvious suicide.
This previous July, her battered unique Birkin went again on the chopping block, selling for an eye-watering $10.1 million.
However Meltzer asserts that Birkin’s legacy is excess of a well-known purse.
“She was a tastemaker who modified the world round her, altered the cultural cloth of the occasions together with her artistry and individuality.”
