Jane Birkin Interview With The NY Times She Explains How The Famous Hermes "Birkin" Bag Was Name After Her

Jane Birkin may be best known for her namesake Hermès bag and her scandalous duet with Serge Gainsbourg on ‘Je T’aime … Moi Non Plus,” but there is far more to her. At 68 years young, Birkin has recorded more than 20 albums, acted in more than 65 films, worked as a designer, a model and a muse, and actively supported a slew of humanitarian causes. Along the way she even picked up an Order of the British Empire title. And yet the Birkin bag somehow still manages to steal the spotlight.

“I was on an airplane,” Birkin said, explaining the bag’s genesis, “when a plastic bag holding all my things broke and everything fell out — my date book, papers, everything. Just as I was saying how I wish Hermès would make a bag that could fit all my things, the man sitting next to me happened to work for Hermès — it was Jean-Louis Dumas, the head designer! They already had the Kelly bag, named after Grace Kelly, so he began work on the Birkin bag. I went down to the atelier, and he had made it in cardboard. And we talked about it, and I said they should make some changes, like making pockets bigger. And that’s how it was made.” Read more.