Serge Gainsbourg article in Vanity Fair

Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg on the set of the movie Slogan, June 1968. By Gilles Caron/Contact Press Images.

I have been loving the most recent issue of Vanity Fair! It must be a music-themed issue, because there is an article about Syd Barrett, an excerpt from Eric Clapton's new book, an Annie Leibowitz photo essay about folk singers, and a great article about Serge Gainsbourg, which you can read in its entirety here. In addition to many photos of him (always smoking of course) there are photos of his Paris apartment, which has been basically sitting untouched since his death in 1991- cans of food in the cupboard, full ashtrays, the whole 9 yards. And the writer interviewed many of the amazing women in his life, including Jane Birkin, Anna Karina, Francoise Hardy and of course his daughter Charlotte ...basically every chic French woman in recent history.

Of course one of my favorite parts of the story is about a handbag... I knew that the Hermès Birkin bag was named after Jane Birkin, but I didn't know that she was known to carry a wicker basket as a purse. I think it's great how this woman who inspired the design of a highly coveted handbag with a price tag ranging from $7000 to $100,000 herself used a basket as a handbag. That's the best! (Read this Time Magazine article for more on the history of the Birkin bag.)