How Jane Birkin Changed ‘French Girl’ Style Forever

“Serge was a great man. I was just pretty,” Jane Birkin was wont to say. But in the fashion industry, where her impact as a style icon is unmistakable, few are likely to agree.

Long before stars relied heavily on stylists and creative directors to shape their image, the British French star—who died Sunday at the age of 76—used her unique sense of dress to project a new kind of femininity and evolving notions of sexual liberation. Her gamine figure and nonchalant styling became essential references in France and beyond, influencing fashion far beyond the Hermès bag that famously bears her name.

Birkin continues to inform designers like Celine creative director Hedi Slimane, stylist Emmanuelle Alt and scores of contemporary brands like A.P.C. and Sézane who continue to build businesses around the French-girl-chic template she shaped.

Birkin, who rose to stardom alongside musician Serge Gainsbourg (her partner until 1980), projected a more innocent, sensual alternative to the ulta-polished cinematic glamour of contemporaries like Catherine Deneuve, and a more coquettish take on sexuality than the beachside bombshell persona of Brigitte Bardot.

While her early steps in fashion were as a muse of Paco Rabanne — whose mod boots and skirts never made more sense than when exposing Birkin’s thighs — the star mostly styled herself, applying a sensual, spontaneous touch that elevated simple pieces like white button-ups, jeans and knit dresses. In the 1970s, Birkin came to embody free-spirited “boho” chic — carrying market baskets as handbags was her idea — but avoided getting weighed down in the ruffles and prints that time-stamp many looks from the period.

Later, when she took to the stage as a singer in the 1980s and 1990s, Birkin worked to refocus the narrative from her baby-doll beauty to her art, shearing off her signature bangs and dressing in androgynous garb that remains the mainstay of many female rockers today: an international sex symbol, now in green army jackets, mens blazers, schlumpy knitwear and jeans, Birkin used fashion to propel herself into a new phase in life and in the public eye.

Put-together but relaxed, everyday yet elevated, Birkin resisted being put in a box. Careful not to be cast as overly precious by her association with luxury house Hermès (whose CEO designed the $10,400 bag bearing her name to meet her needs as a young mother), Birkin would toss the bag around like it was nothing until she stopped wearing it due to tendonitis, and decorated it with stickers for humanitarian causes like Medecins Sans Frontieres.

The notion of “la Parisienne” was indelibly changed by Birkin’s touch: while her fame was most pronounced in France and England, the idea of “French girl” style as synonymous with understated, easy-going elegance continues to grip fashion’s imagination. An echo of Birkin’s influence could be felt at Valentino’s most recent haute couture outing at the Château de Chantilly, where Kaia Gerber opened the show with a white button-up shirt tucked loosely into a pair of trompe l’oeil gazar dungarees.

While the notion of “personal branding” didn’t become widespread until decades after Birkin’s rise, she was surely a master of it: not only could she embody variations of the gamine, the Parisienne and the rocker chick to perfection, she also played a key role crafting the public image of Gainsbourg, who adopted the crumpled shirts and three-day beard that became his signatures at her advisement.

Birkin’s style—which ranged from provocative outings like dark panties under transparent mini-dresses to an embrace of ultra-androgynous, utilitarian garb—told the story of a woman who spent decades juggling her roles as an artist, as an icon of 20th century sexual liberation, and as a devoted partner and mother.

Her three daughters followed in her footsteps: Charlotte Gainsbourg and Lou Douillon also have made careers leveraging their unique personal styles in cinema and music, while Kate Barry (who died in a tragic fall in 2013) was a fashion photographer working for British Vogue and Paris Match.