French icon who inspired Birkin bags dies aged 76

British-born actress and singer Jane Birkin, a Nineteen Sixties wildchild who grew to become a beloved determine in France, has died in Paris aged 76, the French tradition ministry has confirmed.

Le Parisien newspaper and BFM tv reported she had been discovered useless at her dwelling, citing individuals near her. Birkin had a light stroke in 2021 after struggling coronary heart issues in earlier years.

Birken was finest recognized abroad for her 1969 hit wherein she and her then-lover, the late French singer and songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, sang the sexually express “Je t’aime…moi non plus”.

She had lived in her adopted France because the break-up of her marriage to British composer John Barry within the late Nineteen Sixties. Apart from her singing and roles in dozens of movies, she was a well-liked determine in France for her heat nature, and stalwart battle for girls’s and LGBT rights.

She additionally labored as a mannequin and got here to be extensively seen as a vogue trendsetter, inspiring the Birkin purse, a mode put into manufacturing by Hermes.

Jane Mallory Birkin was born in London in 1946, daughter of British actress Judy Campbell and Royal Navy commander David Birkin.

Before venturing throughout the Channel aged 22, she achieved notoriety within the controversial 1966 Michelangelo Antonioni movie “Blow-Up”, showing bare in a threesome intercourse scene.

But it was in France that she really shot to fame, as a lot for her love affair with tormented nationwide star Gainsbourg, as for her tomboyish fashion and endearing British accent when talking French, which some stated she cultivated intentionally.

She was the mom of actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg, photographer Kate Barry, along with her first husband John Barry; and musician Lou Doillon, with Jacques Doillon.

Source: www.perthnow.com.au