When Charlotte Gainsbourg was seven or eight, her mother came to pick her up from school. She remembers this day in particular because her mother was wearing a skintight blue sequined dress. “She was so glamorous, so beautiful,” Gainsbourg says now, sitting on the terrace of her Paris home in the dappled sunlight of the 7th arrondissement. Even today, some 40 years after the event, there is a note of wonderment in her voice. “She was ...” Gainsbourg pauses to think of the right word, “... serene.”It’s an appropriate reaction when one’s mother is the English actress and singer Jane Birkin — a woman so stylish, she went on to have a bag named after her by Hermès.

Source: The Times November 12, 2017 00:16 UTC