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Jane Birkin, Anglo-French Style Icon, Has Died

The singer, actress and style icon who inspired the Hermès Birkin bag has died at the age of 76.
The Anglo-French singer and actress who inspired the Hermès Birkin bag, has died at the age of 76.
Jane Birkin, the Anglo-French singer, actress and style icon who inspired the Hermès Birkin bag, has died at the age of 76. (Getty Images)

The sultry 1969 hit single Je T’aime … Moi Non Plus was a four-and-a-half-minute distillation of languid Gallic cool, in which a Frenchman, his voice coarsened by Gitanes, is heard billing and cooing with an ecstatically sighing young Englishwoman over the swirling motif of a baroque organ. That man was Serge Gainsbourg; his companion was Jane Birkin, the actor and singer, who has died aged 76. Though Birkin worked with some of the world’s finest filmmakers, including Jacques Rivette and Agnès Varda, she knew that Je T’aime … would be remembered above everything else she did. “When I die, that’ll be the tune they play, as I go out feet first,” she said.

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Further Reading

Case Study | Inside Hermès’ Best-in-Class Leather Goods Strategy

How a unique approach to supply chain, design, communications and retail has powered blockbuster demand for iconic bags like the Birkin and Kelly, enabling the French leather goods house to face down rivals and become a global megabrand with a market capitalisation greater than Nike’s.

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