ane Birkin is certainly well represented in the archives here in London – from David Bailey in the 1960s to Corinne Day in the 2000s. Despite many appearances in the magazine, she was not in the slightest bit confined to icons in that she never expected to be celebrated for her looks, because never for one moment did she realise just how beautiful she was. You could swamp her in a pair of outsize clown’s pyjamas with pompoms … and she’d still look utterly … right. The key, of course, apart from affecting a nonchalance with the world of fashion, was to keep it utterly simple. She was never overdressed or fussy, she just looked effortlessly chic. As we all know, a lot of effort goes into “effortless”, but you never got the impression that she cared in the slightest; her style was in-built. More of a French sensibility, than an English one.
