Jane Birkin, born in London on December 14, 1946 and died in Paris on July 16, 2023, will have impressed with her voice with an unshakeable British accent, her acting skills, her social commitments, but also her appearance which has become almost synonymous with the aesthetics of the 60s, 70s, before becoming timeless. From minidresses and micro shorts with an oversized masculine look, to her faithful wicker basket and the legendary Hermès bag that bears her name, a retrospective of Jane Birkin’s unforgettable haute-hippie style.
The mini dress (additional transparency)
For the premiere of the film Slogan by Pierre Grimblat in 1969 (“ erotic year “), Jane Birkin, who plays the main protagonist, surprised the red carpet wearing a particularly short and transparent dress. About this famous naked dress »iconic, commented the actress and singer Vogue France :
“I didn’t realize it [la robe] it was so transparent. This is photographer camera flash effect. If I had known, I would have[aurais] no panties! »
A great habitué of minidresses, Jane Birkin also made an impression with an apron model signed by Paco Rabanne (a great couturier whose creations she was particularly fond of, which left an indelible mark on the aesthetic seventies). In a famous photo of her from 1972, we see her wearing a dress from which she has removed 25 cm of the house’s signature chain mail to make it even shorter, as she confided to Cast out man :
“I had and was wearing a very short Paco Rabanne dress, only I removed about 10 inches of metal from the bottom so you could see my panties. English women wore more outrageously short dresses than cautious French women. The latter all wanted to stay in good taste, when we didn’t care. We had the arrogance of youth, thinking we were doing everything so much better. »
Mini-shorts with long socks
If she hated that her lovers wore socks or even underwear in jeans, Jane Birkin occasionally swapped her minidresses for mini shorts, to be worn with long socks. This is one of the more striking looks around the promotion of her debut album, Say doo dahreleased in 1973: a bohemian blouse, microscopic denim shorts and black knee-highs tucked into the décolleté.
The oversized and masculine quickdraw over forty
If a large part of the collective imagination easily visualizes Jane Birkin’s looks in the 60s and 70s, increasingly shorter and more transparent, it is from the 40s that the artist has found herself more interesting from a stylistic point of view, as she confided to vogue :
“When I see my 1968 photos, my big doll eyes underlined with eyeliner, bangs, I find it awful. I found myself most interesting at forty. I started wearing Tank tops in tartan cotton, masculine shirts by agnès b., oversized trousers enhanced by a thin red leather belt and slip-on sneakers. Oversized men’s clothing is okay as you get older. »
The wicker basket as a city bag
Long before giving her last name to an Hermès bag, Jane Birkin was already legendary for wearing a completely different accessory. It was in the 1960s that she allegedly bought a Portuguese wicker basket at a London market, before making it the signature of most of her looks. sixties AND seventies. Strolling around the city in summer and winter, even walking the red carpet in grand evening looks with a casual bag in such a rustic material created a particularly striking contrast. But in the early 1980s, her husband Jacques Doillon deliberately spilled Jane Birkin’s famous wicker basket, so she must have been very happy that Hermès had made her a bag in 1984.
The Birkin bag
In the film that Agnès Varda dedicates to her, Jane Birkin empties… her Birkin, and looks at the camera to ask:
“So, have you learned anything about me now that you’ve seen my purse?” Even if we unpack everything, we don’t reveal much…”
And the creation of this bag has everything of a legend. It was in 1981 that the artist found herself sitting next to the general manager of Hermès, Jean-Louis Dumas, on a flight from Paris to London, and she suggested to him the idea of creating a bag larger than the Kelly. This is how the Birkin found itself on the market starting in 1984. Today about 12,000 are produced a year, well below demand, hence the rarity of this luxury accessory which makes it even more of a collector’s item and increases its value as soon as it leaves the store. The lei’s creation takes 48 hours of work, performed by a single craftsman from start to finish. But it is still Jane Birkin who tells it better:
“I was flying to London and got promoted and found myself sitting next to a very polite gentleman, and I had my diary and a bag full of papers and stuff, and it all fell apart. So he told me I should have pockets in my planner. I said ‘What do you want, Hermès doesn’t do it with pockets.’ He replied: “I am Hermès”. So rather than making a pocket planner, I suggested making a bag that’s bigger than the Kelly, but smaller than my suitcase that weighs a ton. He asks me how I imagine it. So I took the vomit bag off the plane and drew a sketch on it. He took it with him and a month later I received a call from Hermès inviting me to come and see the prototype. When I tried it on I was told it fit very well and asked if I wanted the bag to have my name on it. I agreed, I was so flattered. »
Since then, his name has been so associated with that of the fashion house that it was only natural that he would walk the runway for the Hermès autumn-winter 2000-2001 collection. The cycle was thus closed.
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Source: Madmoizelle
Mary Crossley is an author at “The Fashion Vibes”. She is a seasoned journalist who is dedicated to delivering the latest news to her readers. With a keen sense of what’s important, Mary covers a wide range of topics, from politics to lifestyle and everything in between.
