The History Of The Birkin Bags.

Jane Birkin, who has died in July 2023 aged 76, was a singer, actress and “style icon”; granted celebrity status in France as the muse of the singer Serge Gainsbourg, she was best known in Britain for giving her name to a prohibitively expensive Hermès handbag.

She met Gainsbourg in Paris when she was 21 and already the wife of the composer John Barry and the mother of their daughter. She and Gainsbourg embarked on an affair that would last 12 years, and in 1969 they released their record Je t’aime moi non plus. It became one of the most famous songs of the 1960s, selling more than a million copies.

Jane Mallory Birkin was born in London on December 14 1946, the daughter of David Birkin, a naval officer who had worked with the French Resistance in the Second World War, and the glamorous actress Judy Campbell.

After attending Upper Chine School, in 1965 Jane Birkin appeared in a musical, The Passion Flower Hotel, for which John Barry wrote the music. Although he was 30, and she just 17, he proposed. Her father wanted to go to court to forbid it because she was still a minor, so they waited until her 18th birthday to be married.

Barry turned out to be a cold and unfaithful husband. “The feeling of being unwanted, undesired and unloved are beginning to strangle. [...] I’m 19 and I feel old,” Jane Birkin wrote in her diary, which she eventually published.

In 1965 she secured her first film role, in Richard Lester’s The Knack, and the following year appeared in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-up, in which she decided to take off her clothes in response to a dare by Barry. “He didn’t think I was brave enough,” she later said, “so I did it to impress him.”

In 1968 she had a starring role in Joe Massot’s Wonderwall and met Gainsbourg when she auditioned for the film Slogan, in which he was starring. He was 40, and had just broken up with Brigitte Bardot.

She later recalled: “I had just separated from John Barry, so I was feeling miserable. I don’t think Serge thought that I was particularly attractive or interesting, and he didn’t seem to take much notice of me.

Pierre Grimblat, the director, organised a dinner for us. I was left with Serge, whom I expected to be very arrogant. I was so surprised when I pulled him on to the dance floor and he said, “No, I don’t know how to dance!” Then he walked on my feet, and I thought it was so charming. After that we went off to Venice, and that’s where I fell head over heels.”

Jane Birkin and Barry divorced in 1969, and she moved into Gainsbourg’s home on the rue de Verneuil in Paris. She called him “strange-looking... degenerate and pure at the same time”. Their relationship was volatile: they became famous for their spats in nightclubs, and on one occasion she threw a custard pie in his face, then threw herself into the Seine in an attempt to get him to forgive her.

In 1969 she appeared with Gainsbourg in two films, Les Chemins de Katmandou and Cannabis, and on her own account in Jacques Deray’s excellent psychological thriller La Piscine, which starred Romy Schneider and Alain Delon.

At this time Gainsbourg was working on his album l’Histoire de Melody Nelson, widely regarded as the finest of his career. Jane Birkin performed backing vocals on a couple of tracks, but it was her portrait on the album cover that proclaimed her status as Gainsbourg’s muse.

In July 1971 she gave birth to their daughter, Charlotte, who would become a famous actress in her own right. Gainsbourg raised Barry’s daughter Kate as his own, Barry failing even to send her a Christmas card until she was 13.

In 1973 Birkin recorded a solo album, Di Doo Dah (written by Gainsbourg), and appeared alongside Brigitte Bardot in Roger Vadim’s Don Juan 73. She made five films in 1975.

There were further albums as well as films, among them John Guillermin’s Death on the Nile (1978), in which she played opposite Peter Ustinov, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow and Maggie Smith, who told her she hadn’t even read the script and was “only doing this for the cash”. Jane Birkin replied cheerfully: “I’m doing it for the prestige,” which caused much merriment, and the pair became great friends.

By the end of the decade, however, Jane Birkin was wearying of life with the hard-drinking, domineering Gainsbourg, who called her “his puppet”, steamed open her mail and neglected to bathe while berating her for making his exquisite museum of a house untidy.

She left him and bought a house in Paris, where she would live for the next 15 years. Jane remained on good terms with Gainsbourg, with whom she shared custody of Charlotte.

Her next paramour was the French film-maker Jacques Doillon, whom she met on the set of his film La fille prodigue, in which she played the lead opposite Michel Piccoli.

In 1982 she gave birth to their daughter, Lou, and two years later appeared in Doillon’s La Pirate and Jacques Rivette’s L’Amour par Terre.

Meanwhile she had renewed her professional partnership with Gainsbourg, who in 1983 wrote the album Baby Alone in Babylone for her. She continued to record and make films, and increasingly appeared on stage.

In 1990 she released Amours des feintes, also written by Gainsbourg. Then, on March 2 1991, her former lover died from a heart attack.

Jane Birkin continued to work, undertaking world tours in which she performed Gainsbourg’s songs. Her other albums included Lolita Go Home; Rendez-vous, an album of duets with Bryan Ferry, Françoise Hardy and others, released in 2004; Fictions (2006); and Enfants d’hiver (2008).

In 1995 she was in London to play one of the lead roles in Euripides’s tragedy The Trojan Women at the National Theatre.

Meanwhile, she polished her political credentials, marching through the streets of Paris brandishing anti-racist placards and defending illegal immigrants. Her other causes included Palestinian rights, Amnesty International and the fight against AIDS.

In 2004 she was appointed to France’s Ordre national du Mérite.

The “Birkin bag” was born in 1984, after she had sat next to the Hermès chief executive Jean-Louis Dumas on a flight and told him how hard it was to find a quality leather carry-case. The accessory was made famous after appearing in the hit television series Sex and the City.

In 2015, Jane Birkin threatened to “dechristen” the bag unless the firm improved its animal rights, which it duly did.

In September 2021, she was forced to cancel a film festival appearance – where she was due to discuss Jane, a documentary about her by her daughter Charlotte – after suffering a minor stroke.

Her daughter, Kate Barry, a photographer, died in 2013. Jane Birkin opened up about the loss on her 2020 album, Oh! Pardon tu dormais. Her two younger daughters, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Doillon, both actresses, models and singers, survive her.

The Birkin bag has, over the years, become a status symbol, with prices ranging from US$10000 to US$500000. The Jane Birkin bag is a part of fashion history and remains a “status” bag, its popularity greater than ever.

Hermes only makes a limited amount of Birkin bags per year as part of their scarcity marketing strategy. This is why buying a Birkin from a boutique involves hoop-jumping for all but their most exclusive VIP customers.