Jane Birkin has passed away, but her fashion influence is eternal

Jane Birkin was the prototype of the modern fashion influencer. The epitome of French je ne sais quoiThe British-born Parisienne’s style continues to hold huge multi-generational appeal, judging by the flood of poignant tribute images that overwhelmed social feeds when she passed away on Sunday at just 76 years old. She was the inspiration for many people’s personal style stories, including a huge number who were far from being born at the height of her fame in the late 1960s and into the 1970s.

Actor, singer and activist were her pursuits, but it is Birkin’s carefree sense of fashion that transcends time and space. The camera adored her, and the images of her dressed to do everyday things on the streets of France – carrying giant wicker baskets, smoking cigarettes, staring fondly at her most famous lover Serge Gainsbourg – are constantly spinning.

So what’s the secret to her lasting influence? Despite being born in England, with imperfect French verb conjugation skills, Birkin became the essence of Gaulish chic. French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron described her over the weekend as “a French icon” who “embodied freedom”.

There are few parallels in the modern lives of women that capture that something unspeakable that everyone longs for. Marilyn Monroe was the bomb; Audrey Hepburn was the gamine. These were her peers, in terms of longevity and widespread admiration for their image. But Birkin instinctively calibrated that stubborn style concoction, the cool girl who pushed boundaries. Her big 1969 number with Gainsbourg was banned by the Vatican for its sexual content and her sultry moans, though its racist nature was offset by her fresh hippie innocence.

She is perhaps most famous today for lending her name to the Hermès Birkin, but the sacred way people look at that bag today is at odds with how Birkin herself used her eponymous bag. On a plane in 1984, Birkin’s worldly goods fell messily from the baggage compartment; her seatmate happened to be Jean-Louis Dumas, then chairman of Hermès. He designed a large bag for all her things, and she agreed to let them put her name on it; a marketing match made in heaven, capitalizing on her otherworldly glamour. Hilariously, Birkin stuffed the bags to the brim, hung various things on them and regularly sold them for charity. In contrast, modern Birkin collectors now build hermetically sealed and temperature-controlled wardrobes for their $10,000+ handbags.

Birkin wasn’t too fond of “stuff,” which was why she carried a large wicker basket in the first place. (It is said that her original Straw Bag, the star of so many current Instagram posts, was deliberately run over by director Jacques Doillon, her post-Gainsbourg partner.)

What gives me the most joy in revisiting all things Birkin is that it will silence the brief and endearing trend of hating big bags – the “spacious” bags so mocked by the stealth wealth residents of ‘Succession’. If Jane Birkin could carry a giant bag and make it chic, we could all do that forever with impunity.

Birkin pioneered many fashion trends. There were her famous bangs, which often looked as if she had cut them herself and which I’m sure are presented to hairdressers all over the world as inspirational photos for ‘French girl hair’. In her youth, she wore white crochet crop tops and sheer knit dresses, both of which are very hot this summer. Her parade of Breton striped shirts, clocks and espadrilles all look incredibly modern too.

Birkin had three daughters. The photographer Kate Barry, from her first and only marriage to film music composer John Barry, died by suicide in 2013 at the age of 46. Her surviving daughters, actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, now 52, ​​and singer, actress and model Lou Doillon, 40 , are both style icons in their own right, older than much of their mother’s fan base.

But it’s actually Birkin’s later years that interest me the most. She refocused her energies on activism, in support of Amnesty International, AIDS causes and Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement. She ditched the more revealing pieces of her youth and switched to a wardrobe of jeans with white T-shirts and white button-downs, sometimes fancy white tuxedo shirts for special occasions. She adopted oversized men’s blazers as her signature, not only because they looked chic, but also because they had large pockets.

You gotta love a woman who cares so much about how to carry her stuff. This is why so many people, of all ages, reacted so strongly to the loss of Jane Birkin. She was beautiful, yes, but more importantly, she did things her way all her life, against the grain.

That’s real style.

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