Jane Birkin Beyond the Bag: Style, Story, and Legacy with Marisa Meltzer
Today on Style POV, I’m joined by the incomparable Marisa Meltzer, bestselling author of Glossy and Girl Power, and a writer the New York Times calls “culturally astute and genuine.” In her latest work, It Girl: The Life and Legacy of Jane Birkin (out October 7th, 2025), Marisa traces how an insecure London teenager grew into the epitome of effortless French style.
Our conversation pulls back the veil on Birkin- not just as a fashion icon, but as an artist, activist, and woman who embodied both myth and humanity. We explore the tension between style and spontaneity, the reality behind the legend, and how her influence endures far beyond the iconic bag that bears her name.
We also dive into:
- Why Marisa chose Jane Birkin as the subject of her newest book
- The evolution of Birkin’s style, from uncertain beginnings to global influence
- The role of accident versus intention in her self-curation
- Life with Serge Gainsbourg and her fame in France
- The cultural legacy of the Birkin bag
- Birkin’s artistry, activism, and family life
- A rare story about her connection to Princess Diana
- What to expect from It Girl upon its release
Whether you’ve long admired Jane Birkin’s mystique or are curious about the woman behind the legend, this episode is an invitation to see beyond the surface- to discover the complexity, vulnerability, and brilliance that made her unforgettable.
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Where to Find Marisa Meltzer
Buy her book: The Life and Legacy of Jane Birkin (it’s a great read!!)*
Website: MarisaMeltzer.com
Instagram: @marisameltzer
Substack: Soft Power by Marisa Meltzer
Timestamps
01:32 – Why Jane Birkin?
03:04 – Jane Birkin’s early days
08:10 – Birkin’s drive to create: accidental or intentional?
12:34 – Becoming a fashion icon
15:28 – Life with Serge Gainsbourg
22:42 – Jane Birkin’s fame in France
24:28 – The Birkin bag
28:32 – Capturing the artistry and activism of Jane Birkin
31:38 – Jane Birkin’s family life
34:16 – A moment with Princess Diana
36:21 – Book Launch: It Girl, the Life and Legacy of Jane Birkin
We may earn a commission from you clicking a link below. And as an amazon associate, we earn on qualifying purchases. Full affiliate policy, here.
Transcript
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Gabrielle: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Style POV. Today, I’ve got the incomparable Marisa Meltzer joining me to pull back the veil on a singular style icon we all know and love, Jane Birkin. Marisa, hailed as The New York Times as a culturally astute and genuine, and, herself, a bestselling author of Glossy and Girl Power has spent years exploring the intersection between style, persona, and cultural impact.
In her new biography It Girl, the Life and Legacy of Jane Birkin due out on October 7th, 2025, Marisa traces how an insecure London teenager became the epitome of effortless French girl style. Often through moments that felt accidental, but revealed her deep intentionality.
We’ll talk about the tension between style and spontaneity and her self-curation, the evolution of Birkin beyond the iconic bag, and how she managed to be both mythic and deeply human. Let’s dive in.
Hi, Marisa. Thank you so much for coming on the Style POV. I’m so excited to have you on to talk about your [00:01:00] wonderful new book, It Girl, the Life and Legacy of Jane Birkin, who is just such an icon in all sorts of ways. So, what drew you to Birkin as a subject in the first place and why now?
Marisa Meltzer: Gosh. Okay. First, thank you for having me on. I’m very excited to be here. I was kind of always a Francophile. I was born on Bastille Day, which is, you know, like , the July 4th of France. And, at some point got into the music of Serge Gainsbourg, like in college, I think through maybe boyfriends.
So, I knew about Jane Birkin and then was into film, when I was young. So, I discovered Blow-Up and La Piscine and always loved the Agatha Christie movies that she was in and of course, her style is kind of inimitable. And in the course of my lifetime, the Birkin bag itself has just, become this huge thing.
And so I knew kind of the rough outlines of her [00:02:00] life and she was in the middle of all these things like music and movies and France and fashion that I was obsessed with. But I knew that there was a lot that I didn’t know about her. And I had a feeling that there was a lot of sort of story to tell. Um, that’s kind of, how it happened.
Gabrielle: Well, I mean, she’s such an inspiration, right? And we see her now in our time as such an icon, right? Like she’s all over Pinterest boards. Our outfits are being inspired by her, you know, her movies are always coming up, like Blow-Up is such an iconic, you know, she’s like, has those cute little mini dresses on and the colored tights.
It’s all very iconic from a style POV. We kind of revere her as this icon. But what I loved about your book is that you kind of put a framework around her life. I’ve read her diaries before, and it’s all very interesting hearing her feelings. But you really tell the story of her life. And I would love it if we could like kind of start with how she started, and her identity [00:03:00] back then. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
Jane Birkin: Growing Up Years
Marisa Meltzer: So, she grew up in London in kind of an upper-middle-class family, the kind that, you know, the kids go to boarding school. Her father was like a naval officer and her mother was a pretty well-known stage actress.
She was around in that perfect time when kind of like the youthquake and the swinging sixties was starting and she didn’t really have a lot of direction in her life. She was also like quite young, like 15 or 16. And so the thing that she was started to be interested in, which, you know, was this thing that her mom had done, which is acting.
And she had some kind of success early on. She was in an ad for a chocolate bar and she was in some plays and musicals. But, her first kind of big breaks were in small roles and movies like [00:04:00] Blow-Up and The Knack. They were big movies and she had kind of small parts in them.
Meanwhile, she was an “it” girl. She was kind of hanging around. The Beatles were friends of hers and her older brother did like camera work for them and for Stanley Kubrick. She was kind of in this like perfect sort of milieu at the time of up-and-coming people and an era that was really like everyone was finding her voice and she was a young, cool girl on the scene.
She met and married John Barry when she was about 18 and he was like 32 and then, you know, had kids and divorced and he was the guy that did all of the composing and soundtracks for James Bond, as well as other stuff. He was also this kind of like hot man on the scene, really successful and their [00:05:00] marriage was just like an instant, absolute disaster, like cheating.
She was really young. She wanted a baby and thought that having a baby would like, you know, help repair things. Did not work. And so she was like 21, had a newborn and was already divorced. Um. And was kind of ready to move back in with her parents and figure out what’s next, but right away she got cast in this movie, Slogan, which was this…
Gabrielle: Yes.
Marisa Meltzer: Sort of you’ve seen it like kind of a how would you describe it? Sort of like a zany satire about the ad industry.
Gabrielle: But very French. Everything is very French humor—European. It’s very visually captivating.
I love your retelling of how she did that because it didn’t sound like she was very comfortable in her looks, at the time. Brigitte Bardot was kind of the ultimate icon and [00:06:00] as you mentioned she was the reason people called like sex kitten was based on her. She was curvy. She was spunky, she was petite, and Jane Birkin was this self-professed, like gangly, awkward, flat-chested, no bomb type of woman.
Marisa Meltzer: She was in the kind of twiggy Penelope tree kind of body type in England and so she also had more like classically-beautiful-kind-of-in-an-old-Hollywood-way mom. I think she just felt like she had a flat chest and looked like a boy and, you know, so even though she was very beautiful…
Gabrielle: Stunning…
Marisa Meltzer: and dressed cool, I think, she thought she wasn’t that beautiful or special. And kind of weird looking.
Gabrielle: But she had so much confidence, the fact that she went out for Slogan, a French film with Serge Gainsbourg and like had the balls to go after that, not speaking a word of French, just hopping on a plane with a newborn and being like, [00:07:00] ‘let me try this out.’
Do you think that helped her become kind of the icon she was, that this confidence was innate in her, and she was a go-getter with her career even? Even though she had all these powerful men in her life along the way.
Marisa Meltzer: She has this kind of way about her where it seemed like everything was just very carefree and like, ‘why not try to do this role or move to France?’
But, really, it was fueled by more sort of ambition than she gives herself credit for. And so I think that’s one of the first layers into her life that you get into where it’s like, Oh, she wants it to seem very, like, I jumped and landed and here and here and here. But really, she was juggling heartbreak, a newborn, and this new job. I think part of it is like being young, being open, and part of it is like really wanting to do something with herself.
I think she was [00:08:00] probably surrounded by a lot of people who were content to probably just hang around and be seen and go to parties or get married or something like that.
Gabrielle: Yes. She clearly had a lot of ambition. Let’s talk about that a little bit. Like the idea of accident versus intention. It is kind of what you were talking about.
Whether it was the role she took or the dresses that she just accidentally, ‘oops, they were see-through’ or ‘oh, I’m just going to flip this dress around and have a plunging neckline. I didn’t think it would be so much of a stir.’ How do you think Jane, herself, would explain that balance between accident and the intention and her drive of being like, I want to create who we know today as Jane Birkin?
Marisa Meltzer: She didn’t really explain it, which I think is kind of genius. Like, if anything, she was being herself, but she was also inhabiting a little bit of a character. Some of that was being typecast as this kind of [00:09:00] carefree English girl abroad in Paris.
Saying things like wearing a see-through crochet dress to the premiere and then claiming, you know, she had no idea it was see-through and that when, you know, cameras and flashes went off, that people would be able to see her underwear and naked chest and, so there was a little bit of maybe like calculated naivete, which in some ways worked kind of against her because I think people always thought she was just playing this version of herself.
One thing I talk about in the book is if you look at some of these roles where she does play this kind of like kooky young woman. And something like La Piscine, which is one of her most famous role in that movie, was re-released a few years ago and has had this huge relevance and resurgence. And the Guadagnino did the kind of remake, A Bigger Splash [00:10:00] is that she plays this literal virgin. This schoolgirl who’s never seen much of the world or know anything of men and people think that ‘Oh, that’s just who she was.’
If you actually look at what was happening in her life, she was already a mom. She is already divorced. She’s already onto her next serious, you know, relationship. She was living in a new country. She was acting, but she was so good at making everything seem natural that it was this kind of magic trick that sometimes backfired a little bit, I think.
Gabrielle: Yeah, I think you mentioned that by like 22 she was kind of typecast as like the ingenue. She described herself as slightly clumsy, slightly lost English girl.
Marisa Meltzer: Part of that was acting in France, and she had an accent that she kind of always had. She was sort of playing certain roles of someone who is [00:11:00] not so dissimilar in some ways like, Jean Seberg or sorts of Americans adrift abroad types.
Gabrielle: You talk a lot about her relationship with Serge and how she was influenced by his previous relationship with Brigitte Bardot and how she kind of felt about their two body types and their two styles and just you know, her jealousy a little bit around that. And yet when we look at her style, she never really tried to copy Bardot’s style. She really found her own style. She really embraces natural, carefree kind of beauty that was very uniquely hers. Do you think that was intentional, or do you think she just kind of grew into that icon?
Marisa Meltzer: I think she was able pretty quickly to embrace her own beauty and kind of work with what she had. She saw herself as some ugly duckling. In reality, she was…
Gabrielle: Stunning!
Marisa Meltzer: …five-seven. She was thin, she was stunning, she had gorgeous eyes. She had [00:12:00] perfect bangs. She was thin in a way that looked really good in clothes and looked very modern. And so she had a very different body than Brigitte Bardot. But it was also a body type that was like becoming really en vogue.
Gabrielle: Yeah.
Marisa Meltzer: And she was in Vogue literally all the time.
Gabrielle: She was.
Jane Birkin as a Style Icon
Marisa Meltzer: She looked really cool in Paco Rabanne’s clothes that she wore and she could do things which are now kind of commonplace, but were really kind of unusual then, which is like, wearing like a t-shirt to dinner, or wearing espadrilles or a basket as a bag, like things that you buy at a market or on vacation or something like that or wearing ballet flats instead of, you know, whatever other shoes or doing you know, thigh high socks with boots, with short shorts, you know?
Gabrielle: Yeah.
Marisa Meltzer: She was kind of wearing these mishmash of outfits, but they totally worked for her. [00:13:00] I think she had a real sense of what kind of fit for her body and what felt like her and what didn’t feel like her.
She could be wearing a white t-shirt. But there’s something about the way she wore it just looked different from everyone else. She liked to kind of pull at the collars and stretch them out and, you know, those little things that people with great style do. Which is I think why all of those videos of like, how do look like Jane Birkin? It’s hard because you can wear a mini dress, but that alone is not enough.
Gabrielle: She was really in tune with her body, what looked good on her, and how to like kind of personalize it. So it was that Jane Birkin version. She was never copying any people, even if she admired their aesthetics. She was her own influence.
You talk a lot about like the dynamics she had with all these people and how they did shape her, but I think she had a real true sense of who she was and what she wanted to project. And you know, [00:14:00] you just see that through her style evolution, and she talks again, this is kind of an example of the intention versus accident because she pretends like it’s all just so innate and all functional like, oh, I wore espadrilles ’cause we were in the south of France. And that’s what I found. But I think she was very calculating and very aware of the aesthetic she was building and her influence on the fashion industry. Like, even with Yves Saint Laurent, she kind of rejected some of, as you mentioned in the book, the Balenciaga, the very proper French woman who wore hosiery. Yes, and she knows.
Marisa Meltzer: She never really wore Chanel or anything like that.
Gabrielle: Yeah.
Marisa Meltzer: She was really a champion of young, rising designers, and they loved her back. So yeah, she wore Saint Laurent her whole life. And also as she aged, she was also in Christophe Lemaire in her later years.
She was always a fan of certain younger, independent designers, and she modeled in that infamous, like Margiela for [00:15:00] Hermes collection in 2000. She just always kind of had this sense of like new and young and interesting. She wasn’t interested in looking like a mother or a proper lady should look like and…
Gabrielle: Yes.
Marisa Meltzer: …In its place, she looked very much like herself and always cool.
Gabrielle: Yeah. It’s like the blue sequin dress picking up her daughter from school. Like, it’s a moment.
Marisa Meltzer: I know.
Gabrielle: She wasn’t afraid to have a moment.
Marisa Meltzer: Yeah, so I mean, part of what’s so cool about this book is the, you know, two of the eras that she’s most associated with, which is like sixties London and seventies Paris are just some of the coolest times in the world where everyone looked cool and seemed like it was just like an endless parties and concerts and late dinners and somehow still acting during the day and recording albums. It seems very fun, you know, especially in this era we’re living in, where I think we could all use some fun and distraction. At least we can [00:16:00] read about it happening if we’re not having it right now.
Gabrielle: I know. I mean, the way you talk about her life with Serge is so interesting. They had a crazy life together. Talking about his house and the room with the black felt walls.
Marisa Meltzer: Oh, yeah.
Gabrielle: And how they would like to go out all night.
Marisa Meltzer: Oh, it’s the entire house. The entire house is covered in. I recommend anyone that goes to Paris, it’s pretty hard to get tickets to the House Museum because they release them in three-month increments and sell out really quickly, and it’s done well. So, only two people are allowed in every half an hour or something like that. It’s cool but going is so wild because, you kind of think like, is that an exaggeration? All the walls were black and the carpet was black. You walk in and you’re like, oh no, all the walls are black, the carpet is black.
The house, you think like, oh, it’s Paris, but it’s a house. But it is really quite small. Weird tiny rooms that are the size of like [00:17:00] glorified walk-in closets except for the living room and the bedroom. The tiny kitchen, the bathroom with the chandelier so low that no one could stand up without bonking their head on it.
The fact that she had a toddler and a baby with their weird room that’s like off of the kitchen. It’s really wild to think of them all living in that, like bronze Lalanne statues everywhere.
Also, Serge and Jane both, he smoked like five packs a day.
Gabrielle: I read that
Marisa Meltzer: She sometimes smoked up to three packs a day. She was a smoker too. They’re just probably like chain smoking inside. It’s truly a different time.
Gabrielle: Lots of risking, lots of cigarettes, jumping in the sun, like it sounded pretty chaotic.
Marisa Meltzer: Yes. Staying out all night and then, you know, going and dropping the kids off at school and sleeping all day and picking them up after you wake up. It was a different [00:18:00] time for sure.
Gabrielle: How do you think her love interests or her family relationships all influenced her progress as this icon? Because clearly she was already in the scene a little bit as in 15, but she really blossomed in her twenties and in her thirties. She really began to find herself when she met Jacques and did The Prodigal’s Daughter.
Marisa Meltzer: The Prodigal Daughter?
Gabrielle: Yeah. So you want to talk about that kind of evolution a little bit and how you think those influences influenced her style and identity?
Marisa Meltzer: Yeah. Well she certainly had a type which is something that I kind of knew and really began to understand well, research, in the book, which is she loved these kind of mercurial genius guys often who were significantly older and so.
It started with John Barry, who was in his thirties when she was a teenager, when they started dating, and then she goes right from him, when she’s 21, to Serge, [00:19:00] who’s 19 years older than her. Then they were together for about 13 years and he’s one of the most famous people in France. His ex right before her is this big affair he has with Brigitte Bardot. He’s dated sort of every kind of hot girl in the country. You know, rising star. So her as his sort of next girlfriend gives her this instant moment of fame where it’s also kind of an onset love affair because he’s her co-star in Slogan and then they record one of the like most sexy and scandalous songs. It sounds like they’re having sex and she’s maybe having an orgasm or something. She’s not. But she’s cooing all over the song and moaning.
Then, they became this kind of scandalous couple and then they have a kid together, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and all of this just sort of fuels their fame as one of the most famous couples [00:20:00] in France and in Europe and sometimes in the world. Definitely one of like the big famous love affairs of that era.
When she was in her mid-thirties, around 1980 or so, she was feeling the relationship was coming to an end and that the things that didn’t work, which is like Serge’s alcoholism, staying up all night, feeling like she was kind of under his thumb, he was kind of this Svengali.
She’d been basically with men her entire life, you know, concurrently, consistently. So she was I think ready to kind of come into her own a little bit. It’s not a perfect, you know, independent girl boss moment. She ends up having an affair with Jacques Doillon, who is a rising young director who casts her in this movie, Prodigal Daughter.
She leaves Serge for him. And they have a daughter, Lou Doillon, and [00:21:00] she’s kind of his muse, but it’s a little bit different because she is acting in his films. But she starts, you know, acting in other films. She starts singing concerts solo. And she starts kind of working with more serious roles and great European directors.
She does a documentary kind of about turning 40 with the great New Wave director, Agnès Varda, which is called Jane B. for Agnès V., which is, really, one of the best and most famous documentaries, kind of about a famous person of that era.
On Finding Her Own Voice
Gabrielle: I love how you talk about her different relationships and how she forms her own identity through them. Because we can see a big Serge influence in her early years on how she’s looking at film and music and his kind of, um, I don’t want to say puppeteering, but definitely like a strong influence in her choices and what she does and kind of his seal of [00:22:00] approval and how she views her fashion too, and how sexual and how performative it is.
When she gets into her mid-thirties, we do see her start to take a little bit more control and choose her own projects and expand how she sees herself. Would you agree with that or do you think that’s just a reflection of her being in her twenties and kind of in love?
Marisa Meltzer: Both. I mean, I think that, she was in love and excited. I think they were both sort of great creatively charged by each other, and that it’s kind of a natural evolution to get older and maybe want to be taken a little more seriously or seen just kind of individually and not as one half of something.
It’s also complicated because it wasn’t just this like easy narrative of she found her voice, became the most famous actor in France, and won an Oscar and became world famous. Her ambition kind of had its limits in that [00:23:00] she acted in some famous roles, but, you know, she didn’t become like Charlotte Rampling, who was a fellow Brit, who she had known her whole life, who acted in both English language and French language movies and was kind of this worldwide star. I don’t know, like Juliet Binoche or something that sort of crosses over into Hollywood. Instead, she really stayed in France and kind of French famous, which I think was a choice in that. She was ambitious, but I think she also really liked kind of picking and choosing.
She enjoyed the comforts of France and long vacations and work-life balance and I don’t think she wanted to sort of sacrifice everything she had just for the idea of. She wasn’t driven particularly by fame for the sake of fame or money, really. She just wanted to work on things that excited [00:24:00] her and those tended to be more small-scale. So, it also rejects some of the traditional, easy success narratives.
Gabrielle: Yes, definitely. And what’s interesting to me too is that, she viewed herself as an actress first, then a singer, and she really flushed that out. But what we know her best for now is her style.
She’s all over everyone’s Pinterest boards. But also, let’s talk about it, the Birkin bag and how that became her legacy, which is to me such a juxtaposition to everything she embodies.
Marisa Meltzer: Yeah, part of the bag is that it has a very sort of like rom-com kind of story and that she had carried these baskets as bags for years and was getting on a plane from London to Paris and, you know, it was like stuff was spilling out and the guy who was sitting next to her was sort of [00:25:00] like, you need a better bag. And she sort of joked that if Hermes made one, she would use it. And of course the guy ends up being like the head of Hermes and part of the family that owns the company.
And so Hermes has always kind of done custom bags for the very rich and very special.
Gabrielle: Yes.
Marisa Meltzer: Well also like, you know. You could get like a custom, like baseball mitt, or probably like a custom book binding kit or whatever your sort of passion was if you’re in enough with Hermes, you know, this is the rarest or rare, but you could, I imagine get your car’s upholstery in Hermes leather or something. So she was sort of among the few where they were like, we will make you a custom bag. For most people that would be like the most exciting day of their lives.
Gabrielle: True.
Marisa Meltzer: And she gets it and she loves it and they love it so much that they say, you know, we want to produce it.
Hermes is a quirky company where it’s hugely [00:26:00] famous, but they also don’t do like celebrity endorsements or have models or actors selling things or in their ads. And so the bag takes off, kind of in a slow way, like different from some of the ‘it’ bags now where it’s like, and introducing yeah, you know, the puzzle bag or something and then suddenly everyone has one.
This was a little slower, but it’s certainly, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy famously had one. It was in Sex and the City and Gilmore Girls, and it soon became the most famous bag in the world, which was really something that it became totally divorced from her and that people had no idea that the bag was named after, you know, it’s like something like, I don’t know, like is there a real Duncan Hines or something behind like the cake mix or that sort of thing. Like, you wonder about those sorts of. It becomes just a brand name almost, or a [00:27:00] style name. And so it became much more famous than her, which is strange when it’s, you know, her own name.
That really reached a fever pitch this year when her original bag went for auction and I was at the auction in Paris, and it sold for $10.1 million.
Gabrielle: Yes.
Marisa Meltzer: Money that I don’t think she would’ve ever fathom. It was on the market because she had originally sold it in an AIDS charity auction to raise money, and donated it. I think it sold for, in the mid nineties for I don’t know how much. Less than, you know, a hundred thousand. Surely, it’s undisclosed, but yeah. And then, as someone else bought it in 2000 or so and then just sitting on it for, like, 25 years in storage waiting for their turn.
Gabrielle: Well, it’s mind blowing to me too, just because it’s become such a symbol of luxury. She was like the queen of nonchalance and her basket bags. The duality of those two things I find [00:28:00] like really interesting and I love that she really promoted and encouraged Hermes to donate money based on their profits as well, because she was very much of an activist. Can we talk a little bit?
Marisa Meltzer: Yes. She just had a very different relationship to the bag than everyone else. She didn’t have to pay for them.
Gabrielle: Yes. Well, everyone should watch her like what’s in a bag, because it’s fascinating. It’s like beat up. It has prescriptions and pens and like all this. It’s a very used and loved bag when she did.
Marisa Meltzer: Yes, that’s from the Agnès Varda documentary. It is quite a book.
Gabrielle: Can we talk a little bit about your writing process when you were doing it as well? Because I found the book very affectionate towards Jane, but also incisive. Were there any moments or kind of where you had to like push past your idea of who you thought Jane Birkin was to get to the woman underneath that you show and portray and her strength, her weakness, and her love affairs. You really give a full picture of her that I don’t think everyone has seen.
Marisa Meltzer: Thank you, [00:29:00] yes. Constantly, I try to do all my research as much as I can, kind of first and at once. And when I’m doing the research, I am trying to really just have an open mind of just consuming things, reading, and taking notes of whatever grabs my eye. My M.O. during that phase is like, don’t try to make sense of it yet. Just gather information, take notes, and then later on, it’s my job to then zoom out and put together, what I think this person’s, you know, the important things that happen and what I think of their lives.
For her, it was about telling the story of someone who is more than a muse and not just a three-dimensional person on a mood board, but also someone who made some strange decisions sometimes when it came to parenting. Or chose guys, for romantic relationships that you’re rooting [00:30:00] against, who was, you know, a little messy and loved drama, it seems.
Along with the activism, the artistry, and the clothes and how, sort of what is kind of sweet nature she had. And so, but that’s also what makes someone human and fully formed and, I think, more interesting to read about. I don’t like reading biographies where it seems like the person writing is just completely in love and everything that the person they’re writing about their subject does is immensely laudable.
I want to make it clear that Jane Birkin, like anyone, made mistakes. Sometimes she learned from them and sometimes she didn’t.
Gabrielle: Yes. Was there any particular scene or detail when you were writing that you uncovered where you were just surprised when you read it, you were like, ‘this is Jane. This is Jane in a story,’ you know, detail or something that really encapsulates it?
Family Life
Marisa Meltzer: There are a few. I mean, during the editing process, one thing my [00:31:00] editor did was had me cut some of the parties because I loved every party, but there was a certain point, and I finally came around to her side where it was like, it just becomes a blur of like parties and famous people at them.
You either have to sort of argue why this party is special, or it just becomes like, ‘we get it. She went out a lot. She knew famous people.’ But there was one. In the seventies where, I forget even who the party was for because it doesn’t even matter, but like Mick Jagger is there, like ribbing her, and she gets drunk.
And Serge, unlike his normal, goes home before her and she stays out all night with like, Michelle Nikko, driving around the city in the middle of the night and all of that. But then there are also really sad moments like the night that her daughter won the kind of French equivalent [00:32:00] of the Oscars for best in newcomers.
Charlotte Gainsbourg was like, 13 or 14 or something, and they’d go to celebrate at Jules Verne, which is this very fancy, famous restaurant that’s in the Eiffel Tower. It has its own special elevator. So it’s like far up I’ve actually been before. And, her older daughter, Kate, uses that moment to announce that she is pregnant and that her, she and her boyfriend had, you know, had a lot of issues with drugs and alcohol and the law. And she sort of dramatically is like, I’m keeping the baby and if we have to get married in jail, we will. And it’s dramatic. It’s bad timing. It’s a huge family fight at the wrong time.
Kate ends up leaving the restaurant, smashing drinking or wine glasses in her wake. That also to me was very telling because it’s a sort of a side [00:33:00] of the hardships in her life that you didn’t really get to see very much and she was doing things on a grand scale.
These are the sorts of problems that everyone deals with, whether it’s, you know, family issues or raising kids or, you know, just a night that goes really off piece.
Gabrielle: Absolutely. I mean, I love that you showed that 360 view of her life, and I didn’t know enough about that and it was really interesting to me. I also remember you talking about the parties. Like her first date with Serge was like, they go out to like four different restaurant or bars in.
Marisa Meltzer: Oh God. I know.
Gabrielle: I was just like thinking about it. I’m like, I’m so old. I could never do this. I wouldn’t have the energy to make it to four different clubs in a night.
Marisa Meltzer: Yes. They end up at a hotel, but like, they don’t even. He passes out while she’s, like, in the bathroom, and, yes, they go to so many parties and [00:34:00] clubs.
Gabrielle: That’s crazy.
Marisa Meltzer: In dinners, you know, all in just one night. It’s like everything was like that, which is, I know, you know, very, very glamorous.
Gabrielle: Okay. So, before we close out this interview, I want to ask you a fun question, which is…
Marisa Meltzer: Sure.
Gabrielle: …Everyone probably wants to answer this question, too. Everyone would jump at the chance for the opportunity. But if you could borrow one thing from Jane’s closet, what would it be and why?
Marisa Meltzer: So, obviously I would love one of her beat-up Birkins because how perfect would that be? It’s a great bag for someone like me who lives in New York and doesn’t have a car, and can just cram a lot of stuff into it.
But, I think the honest answer is there is this state dinner she went to in Paris when Princess Di was in town in, like, 1992. She’s wearing this probably Saint Laurent tuxedo with just like an open silk shirt [00:35:00] underneath and princess Di is wearing this, like, gigantic velvet long sleeve dress.
It’s right before she announced that she’s getting divorced. She looks very sad and very kind of stuffy and unhappy and, you know, Jane Birkin on the other hand, looks very like herself and totally dressed up worthy of dinner at like A-list palace or I forget exactly where it was. But, also just so comfortable in her skin and she’s probably in her mid-forties at that point, just looking totally happy in who she is and in such contrast to Princess Diana.
It’s also at the same dinner where she told her that she should just move to Paris because the press would leave her alone, which is quite dark and not what ended up happening to Princess Diana in Paris. But, yeah, I love that tuxedo and would absolutely wear it.
Gabrielle: Oh, I mean her whole closet. It would be hard to [00:36:00] choose just one. I’d have to do the straw bag though. Because no one pulls off a straw bag like her. I wouldn’t dare to do it, but if I could hold her straw bag, I’d be pretty happy.
Marisa Meltzer: Yes. That makes sense.
A Book that Unveils Jane Birkin
Gabrielle: It’s iconic. Marisa, thank you so much for coming on. Your book is incredible. Again, I’ll make sure everyone has links to it. It is out on October 7th. It’s called It Girl, the Life and Legacy of Jane Birkin. Whether you’re a Francophile or you just love Jane Birkin like I do, or you’re interested in seeing what her life was really like and how she formed this beautiful style that expressed herself and what really shaped her life, this is the book to check out. So, thank you again for coming on and talking all things Jane with me.
Marisa Meltzer: Oh, thank you. It’s such a pleasure. I could do this for five more hours.
Gabrielle: I know, but they’ll just have to read the book, right? They’ll have to.
Marisa Meltzer: Yes I’m there for everyone’s thoughts and feelings, for sure.
Gabrielle: Amazing. So, thank you so much for coming on. Until next [00:37:00] time.