THE BIRKIN RULES
LAST night a true fashion moment was witnessed: Jane Birkin renounced the Birkin bag in favour of something altogether more affordable. "I will always love the Hermes bags but I have tendonitis so I had to search for something smaller," she says. So now, while Hermes fans all over the world will continue to lust after the £3,000-a-pop totes that were named after the sultry French actress, the woman herself is keeping all her essentials in a sporran. "This is genius," she says, holding up a battered leather purse that is hanging off one hip. "I found it in an antique shop in Scotland for £5. I have always liked to hang my house keys off my trousers with a ribbon so I can really fit everything else I need in here. It looks attractive hanging at the front of shorts or on the hip with trousers." Blaming "too much being flung around by Hamlet" for her sore arm, Birkin was in London for the launch of the new scent she has created with Miller Harris, L'air de Rien, and says she had the idea for it when she was at her brother Andrew's house in Wales experimenting with a perfume lab he had created for his forthcoming film, Perfume. "I have never liked perfumes," she says. "I have always preferred to carry pot pourri in my pocket. It was an interesting exercise in finding out what you don't like. All the things usually associated with heady, dark-haired women like hyacinth, tuberose and lily-of-the-valley made me vomit when they were enclosed in a bottle so this one is much more me – I wanted a little of my brother's hair, my father's pipe, floor polish, empty chest of drawers, old forgotten houses." So now a Birkin sporran and the new scent are on a list of fashionista essentials, what should we wear them with? "I'm wearing 15-year-old Converse boots with the laces open so I can show off my ankles – at my age those and my collar bones are the only bits I can show off – with five-year-old men's cargo trousers and an ancient Prada jersey that I wash myself and wrap up in a towel, just the way my mother taught me," she says. Avoiding the paparazzi these days means Birkin hardly makes it to the international fashion collections. "But I am always loyal to Hermes and I like to go backstage to give Jean Paul Gaultier a kiss," she says. "And I went to Galliano with my daughters recently which was fantastic – a true show." After a life in the limelight, Birkin admits that all three of her daughters (photographer Kate Barry, singer Charlotte Gainsbourg and actress Lou Doillon), shun the paparazzi flashbulbs. "They are ferocious about their privacy – they learned how not to be from me," she says. "If I can take credit for anything it is that they, and my four grandchildren, all get along so well together. I'm proud of the fact that if I left tomorrow the brood would all be alright together." Her parting shot? An essential piece of style advice: "I absolutely never wear socks," she says. "I hate the terrible mark they leave around the ankle. I would rather die than be wearing socks when the accident happens." (September 5 2006, AM)
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