Boarding a flight in 1983, Jane Birkin found herself wrestling with the open straw basket into which she habitually crammed everything from playscripts to nappies. As she reached for the overhead locker the basket overturned, spilling the contents on her neighbour. He turned out to be the chief executive of Hermès, the French luxury goods company, and immediately offered to make her a bag with internal pockets and a secure closure. Birkin sketched what she wanted on a sick bag and “The Birkin” was born: a slouchy trapezoid in finest leather complete with its own little padlock. These days a Birkin bag starts at around £10,000 while the original, made for Birkin herself, was auctioned this summer for £7.4m.
It is a tale that gets endlessly repeated thanks to its neat compression of the main beats of the Jane Birkin story. First, there’s the insouciance, the fact that the Anglo-French singer and actor never seemed to go after anything; rather, it came to her. Then there’s her lack of mortification at having her whole life upended on a strange man’s lap, nappies and all. Finally, there’s her refusal to feel overawed by her bounty. Birkin famously did not treat her Hermès bag with especial reverence, enthusiastically festooning it with charms, beads, stickers and ribbons. The trend for personalising your handbag with bits of tat was ubiquitous this summer, part of a wider revival of the Birkin aesthetic, comprising flared mid-wash jeans, peasanty cheesecloth blouses and ballet flats. You couldn’t avoid it if you tried.
All of which is to say that Marisa Meltzer’s biography of Birkin doesn’t really break new ground. Meltzer, a journalist who has previously written books on the founder of Weight Watchers and the millennial cosmetics company Glossier, has not persuaded any of Birkin’s friends or family to talk. (It says much for the affection and loyalty in which Birkin is held that, two years after her death at the age of 76, her inner circle remains tight-lipped.) So instead, Meltzer has trawled through the thousands of profiles and interviews published since 1969, the year when Birkin broke through with Je T’aime … Moi Non Plus, the orgasmic pop song that made her “world famous in three minutes” according to one Swiss magazine. In addition, she draws on Birkin’s published diaries that cover the period 1957 to 2013.
The result is a brisk account of how the future star walked out of her Isle of Wight boarding school at 16, discovered that her tall, thin, androgynous look was just right for the 1960s and started getting small acting parts. By the age of 21 she had appeared naked in Antonioni’s Blow-Up, been seduced by the film composer John Barry, got pregnant and split up.
It is when Birkin made it to Paris in 1967 that her story properly began. She auditioned for a part in a film starring a man she thought was called “Serge Bourguignon”, fell in love and moved to Paris to be with him. Serge “Bourguignon” Gainsbourg sounds ghastly, not least because of his need, despite already being 40, to épater le bourgeoisie at every opportunity. This tendency reached its climax when Je T’aime … Moi Non Plus was condemned by the papacy and banned by the BBC. Naturally, he was thrilled.
Birkin’s 12 years with Gainsbourg sound like a piece of deranged performance art. People got used to seeing them in drunken fights at Brasserie Lipp, and Gainsbourg took to carrying a gun which he swore he would use on anyone who made eyes at her. Birkin in turn registered her despair by jumping into the Seine before thinking better of it and scrambling out dripping wet (she was annoyed that her Yves Saint Laurent blouse permanently shrank). It is a relief for the reader, let alone Birkin, when she finally manages to wriggle free and set up home with film director Jacques Doillon, who is no less controlling, but at least takes showers (Gainsbourg was a famous soap-dodger).
Meltzer shows herself to be careless with details and ignorant of the wider cultural background. She describes Roman Polanski as “Polish-born”, despite Paris being his birthplace, and suggests that the city is home to several “cathedrals”. More forgivable, perhaps, is her insistence that Jane Birkin was a major creative force in music and theatre in the late 20th century.
She really wasn’t, which is why Birkin’s continuing appeal to both women and men remains so intriguing. Although she was still scheduling concerts at the time of her death, audiences weren’t flocking to hear Birkin sing so much as soak up her essence. And it is the precise nature of that essence that resists parsing. She was romantic yet raunchy, British yet French, an idealised woman yet a self-described “garçonne”. Jane Birkin contained multitudes, and until we have an account that dives deeper than this one, she will remain tantalisingly elusive.
• It Girl: The Life and Legacy of Jane Birkin by Marisa Meltzer is published by Atria (£20). To support the Guardian order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
