“Oysters on Christmas Eve, hot cross buns for tea on Christmas Day, champagne for the neighbours.”
propping up a mic at Decimo at The Standard, London wearing her dear old Saint Laurent men’s suit, vintage Agnès B shirt and signature tennis shoes. “I find big menswear makes me look small and frail,” the doyenne of insouciant style tells. “Put me in a frock and make-up and I look almost 100 with a Joan Crawford face and a tubby figure!”
The evening of classic French ditties from Jane and Serge [Gainsbourg] – who were once pop culture’s golden couple – intermixed with Tom Waits and Rufus Wainwright tunes, will be tender, she hopes. “For an hour, I’ll think of nothing but the songs, singing true and sharing emotions,” she muses. “An hour later, it will be a new year, and I’ll be a mother, a grandma, a sister, and a friend again.
Decades on from the 1967 hit “Je t’aime… mon non plus” – and indeed the film Gainsbourg directed his lover and collaborator in of the same name – Birkin is still plagued by “the most ghastly stage fright”. “There’s the fear of disappointing everyone and letting them down…” she begins. “I’ll wear a scarf at night and keep a Japanese mask in my pocket in the run-up to make sure my voice holds out against bugs.”Birkin’s make-up bag is troubling her, too.
If anxiety over blusher seems apposite to the epitome of cool we have conditioned ourselves to associate with Birkin, it’s a different story at Christmas when she is not on show. “I never wear anything special,” she shrugs. An apron is essential, as she will be cooking Christmas lunch at her daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg’s house in Paris, with her younger daughter, Lou Doillon, and the extended family.
She laments the lack of carol services in France – although the Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris will be blasting out festive tunes – but the priority, of course, will be rehearsing her own songs ahead of the big night. “I’m lucky to have a great repertoire,” she says, buoying herself up. “The audience knows the songs and they are moved by the memories of Serge and I. That’s all I’ve got going for me.
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