BERT STERN/CONDÉ NAST/GETTY IMAGES; BOTTI/GAMMA-KEYSTONE/GETTY IMAGES
HE UNLIKELY LOVE AFFAIRthat blossomed
between Jane Birkin, the beautiful 21-year-old
British ingénue, and Serge Gainsbourg, the
controversial 40-year-old French musician, actor
and director, lasted little more than a decade, yet it
remains legendary. Together, they had a daughter
er Charlotte Gainsbourg), starred in several films
and released the notorious song “Je T’aime ... Moi Non Plus”.
Birkin and Gainsbourg’s relationship has been so romanticised
in the nearly 40 years since it ended that it’s easy to forget it was
also plagued with scandal. Laced with suggestively heavy breathing
and full of explicit sexual references, “Je T’aime ... Moi Non Plus”
reached number one in Europe but was banned by the BBC and
the Vatican. They fought publicly and passionately: Birkin once
threw herself into the Seine during an argument, after which they
walked off arm-in-arm. (“Serge was, you might say, a fan of the
grand gesture,” she said later.) In 1984, years after Birkin had left
him due to his excessive drinking, he released a duet with then
13-year-old Charlotte called “Lemon Incest”. The lyrically ambig-uous song was interpreted by many to be an autobiographical song
about physical love between a father and daughter. (Gainsbourg
denied these allegations, and Charlotte later said, “For me, it
wasn’t a problem ... there was a pureness behind it.”)
Through it all, Birkin has retained her courage, strength and
sense of awe about her life. While Birkin, a name now synonymous
with French fashion, credits her fame to Gainsbourg (“He was a
great man. I was just pretty”), there is no doubt she cemented her
own iconic status. Case in point: the Hermès Birkin bag, which was
created after a chance encounter between the It girl and the CEO of
Hermès, Jean-Louis Dumas. The pair was seated next to each other
on a flight in the early ’80s and, after Birkin upended her signature
woven basket while trying to stow it in the overhead locker, they
sketched her dream handbag on the back of a sick bag. At one
point, the Birkin bag was deemed a better investment than gold.
Véronique Mortaigne sat down with Birkin in Paris to time-
travel back to the film set ofSlogan, where the couple met in 1968
and absolutely did not experience love at first sight. What follows
is an extract of her book, translated from the original French.The magic ofJane BirkinandSerge Gainsbourg— a couple brought together by fate
yet doomed for heartbreak — is indelibly etched into pop culture. Now in her seventies,
Birkin recalls the intimate details of their relationship for a new bookOpposite page: Jane Birkin and
Serge Gainsbourg in 1970.
This page: the couple in 1979.123 HARPERSBAZAAR.COM.AU April 2019