When between the end of the 60s and the beginning of the 70s Jane Birkin strolled around Parisian streets playing the role of the French girl, while not being French, with her handbasket, her lovely messy bangs, her withe t-shirt and a limitless amount of innate and unaware class; she couldn’t imagine Hermès, a few years later, giving her name to a bag, absolutely not in straw, which was destined to become every snob woman’s object of desire.
She surely couldn’t be aware of the marketing strategy chosen by that luxury brand, by making the bag “unavailabe” for the sole purpose of raising its value, proportionally to those women’s desire to own it at every cost.
So today, my job leads me in search of bags for rich ladies, who would be able to spend every price to have their “desired piece of leather”. And while I keep looking for Birkins at 7000 euros for my clients, I love losing myself around the world’s markets, hunting the perfect relic, always changing in shape and color, among the longings and trend of the moment; in my last successful expedition I got this handbasket bag, reminding Jane’s one, cylindric and with a leather handle.
Needless to say, this search was long and exhausting, as the one to buy the real Birkin, but by sifting through the markets of the world so much, from Porta Portese to San Francisco or Bangkok, I finally found the perfect handbasket – so as the boyfriend- (…well, perfect basket, almost perfect boyfriend). I met it by chance at a market near my house, we loved each other immediately, it was love at first sight.
To celebrate the moment, I had my bangs cut as Jane, too! That’s not real, I just wanted to change something and now my bangs cover my eyebrows, but it’s ok, I didn’t even like them very much!
Now back to Jane, what she reminds us is the imagine of those years when everything was possible, where fashion, stylists and all of us cyclically seek refuge; that summer in 1969 when she whispered “Je t’aims moi non plus” with her lifelong partner Serge Gainsbourg, exciting men and women (but this should not be said, for God’s sake), so the Osservatore romano censored her, and 50 years later… has something actually changed?
But we also love Jane as she is today: a woman who adorned her Birkin with stickers, beads and charms and then auctioned it off to raise funds for Japan; a woman who aged with class, showing today her wrinkles with the same spirit and charme of a few years ago, when she showed her body and took off her bra.
– The perfect hand basket
– Alessandra Giannetti long skirt
– Shirt by my boyfriend
– Zara sandals
– Martin Margiela silk robe manteau
