The most interesting thing about Birkin, however, and what we can draw lessons from in aging with style, was that she seemed not to dwell on her changing looks. She seemed not to mourn the loss of such a golden youth. Indeed, as she told French Vogue: “When I see photos of me from 1968, my big doll eyes underlined with eyeliner, exaggerated mouth, bangs, I find it horrible.”
She continues, “I found myself the most interesting at 40. I started wearing Scottish cotton marcels [a.k.a. undershirts] Agnès b men’s shirts, oversized pants upgraded with a thin red leather belt and sneakers without laces.”
There is so much fashion advice to unpack there! See how Birkin took her tomboy look and leaned right into it? As she said, “Oversized men’s clothes are good when you get older. We look fragile. At one point, you have to know how to give up the ladies’ dresses. They make you look older.”
There was a great moment on the red carpet in 2021 when Jane by Charlotte, a documentary on Birkin by her daughter, debuted at Cannes. Birkin is in one of her slightly oversized black suits, as per her custom, but all you see is her glow. This despite the fact that unlike her contemporaries Catherine Deneuve and Sophia Loren, Birkin has clearly not had any work done. To facelift or not to facelift — either is a totally valid choice. What works here for Birkin is that not to facelift is totally consistent with her anti-fussy esthetic. She clearly wears her jowls and wrinkles with pride.
Another thing Birkin gave up as she grew older was that open-lipped model pout, the one so enthusiastically picked up by the entire legion of ’90s supermodels. You know, the one young women use to kind of convey a come-hither glance? Instead, she did something radical: she began to smile in photographs. As Birkin often said: “Keep smiling, it takes 10 years off!” It also lights up your face, and makes a virtue of those laugh lines around your eyes.
Makeup was another thing Birkin gave up as she aged. Also from the French Vogue interview she had some simple advice here: “At a certain age, stop playing with false eyelashes. Otherwise it becomes terrifying.” These are confident remarks, and they underlie the entire style spell Birkin cast, throughout her life: there is no style without confidence. To take that one step further, if you are confident, you can take your look and allow yourself to age within it. Call it graceful if you choose, but better to call it practical. It doesn’t mean you are giving up, it means you are adapting to focus on your best features: your brain and your personality. Knowing who you are is the sexiest thing.
Another secret to Birkin’s ageless appeal is that she wasn’t uptight about looking perfect all the time. The best example of that is the famous Hermès Birkin handbag created for her, and named for her. Unlike the Kardashian clan or the rapper embrace of a collection of Birkins as a symbol one has “made it,” Birkin treated her namesake bag with irreverence. Not for her the specially built closets lined with bags in a rainbow of colours. In fact, though she was obviously given the bags for free, she had only ever one at a time and always chose black. Then she stuffed them to the brim and beyond with things she wanted to carry around. She hung her watch off the strap, as well as all manner of trinkets as she liked the sound they made as she walked. She once stuck a Tibetan flag on the front of a Birkin. That is how a confident woman carries a $10,000 bag. We can all learn from that not to be so precious with designer things. She also sold each bag for charity when she was ready for a new one.
The oft-told story of how the bag collaboration came about — Birkin’s plastic bag of stuff, serving double duty as diaper bag, falls out of an overhead compartment and seat mate and Hermès chief Jean-Louis Dumas volunteers his factory and craftspeople to solve her problem chicly — but the beauty of the story, the Birkin-ness of it all, is the detail that has Jane drawing out her dream bag for the Hermès honcho on an airplane vomit bag. A triumph of practicality!
While Birkin continued to sing and tour, a greater part of her time and energy as she aged was devoted to advocacy. Freeing Tibet, fighting for justice in Myanmar with Amnesty International, fighting for women and animal welfare. (She even took on Hermès for the alligator skin Birkin models.) This aligns perfectly with the maxim that being involved in meaningful work and pursuing passion projects will keep you looking, and equally importantly, feeling, younger.
Jane Birkin was an icon not for the pretty photos of her lounging around France skimpily clad 55 years ago. She was an icon because she moved beyond that youthful sunshine into a full life, lived with evolving style, verve and not caring what people thought of her. You can’t “lose” your youth if you don’t fear getting older.
Always asking questions,
—Leanne Delap
