Sad news - one of the coolest people on the planet, style icon, actress and singer Jane Birkin has departed, in a cloud of Galoise-smoke, no doubt, for Fabulon.
Aptly described by the British ambassador to France as "the most French of British artists", she transcended the waif-like ingenue image that the media had created around her to carve her own niche, with or without the lover with whom she was most associated Serge Gainsbourg. Hermes famously created a best-selling bag named after her, fashion houses tried to ape her style, and she chose her own career path - not many actresses could say they'd worked in the super-cool French New Wave film era with the likes of with Agnès Varda and Jacques Rivette, and appeared in two uber-camp Poirot films (Death on the Nile and Evil Under the Sun).
Musically, she may have been launched into the spotlight thanks to the pseudo-orgasmic Je T’aime … Moi Non Plus, but she sustained a long and varied repertoire, releasing an album with fellow "cult French icon" Etienne Daho as recently as 2021.
Here are three clips of the lady herself - firstly in a collaboration with another véritable trésor national:
From a rather bewitching 2003 album of hers we have in our collection here at Dolores Delargo Towers, Arabesque:
And a cover of a song originally sung by fellow ex-pat in France, Petula Clark:
A great loss.
RIP, Jane Mallory Birkin, OBE (14th December 1946 – 16th July 2023)
