Habitually Chic®'s Logo  

La Fête Nationale

by habituallychic

07 . 13 . 15

fete-nationale-jane-birkin-serge-gainsbourg-france-habituallychic-001-
The 14th of July in France is La Fête Nationale holiday the equivalent to our American holiday of the 4th of July.  They don’t refer to it as Bastille Day as we do here. Many of the French are enjoying their long bank holiday weekend in Normandie or another place in the country. And maybe while they’re away they might listen to a little music from singer/songwriter Serge Gainsbourg. Crowds mourned outside his apartment in Saint-Germain when he died in 1991 just as they had done outside the Dakota in New York for John Lennon. While he was with actress and singer Jane Birkin for many years they were not still dating at the time of his death. What I didn’t realize that their daughter Charlotte still owns the apartment at 5 bis rue de Verneuil and has been trying to turn it into a museum ever since.

While not many people understand why Jane fell for the Serge, it does seem that they were madly in love and were definitely a fashionable couple. We have Jane to thank for inspiring Hermès chief executive Jean-Louis Dumas to create a bag named for her. He was seated next to her on a flight from Paris to London in 1981 and watched everything spill out of her straw basket. Her wide legged jeans are also still inspiring fashions to this day.

To read more about this fascinating couple and see more images of their dark and chic home, I suggest reading The Secret World of Serge Gainsbourg from Vanity Fair.

Vive la France !
fete-nationale-jane-birkin-serge-gainsbourg-france-habituallychic-002 fete-nationale-jane-birkin-serge-gainsbourg-france-habituallychic-003 fete-nationale-jane-birkin-serge-gainsbourg-france-habituallychic-004 fete-nationale-jane-birkin-serge-gainsbourg-france-habituallychic-005 fete-nationale-jane-birkin-serge-gainsbourg-france-habituallychic-006 fete-nationale-jane-birkin-serge-gainsbourg-france-habituallychic-007 fete-nationale-jane-birkin-serge-gainsbourg-france-habituallychic-008 fete-nationale-jane-birkin-serge-gainsbourg-france-habituallychic-009 fete-nationale-jane-birkin-serge-gainsbourg-france-habituallychic-010 fete-nationale-jane-birkin-serge-gainsbourg-france-habituallychic-011 fete-nationale-jane-birkin-serge-gainsbourg-france-habituallychic-012 fete-nationale-jane-birkin-serge-gainsbourg-france-habituallychic-013 fete-nationale-jane-birkin-serge-gainsbourg-france-habituallychic-014 fete-nationale-jane-birkin-serge-gainsbourg-france-habituallychic-015 fete-nationale-jane-birkin-serge-gainsbourg-france-habituallychic-016

fete-nationale-jane-birkin-serge-gainsbourg-france-habituallychic-018 fete-nationale-jane-birkin-serge-gainsbourg-france-habituallychic-019 fete-nationale-jane-birkin-serge-gainsbourg-france-habituallychic-020 fete-nationale-jane-birkin-serge-gainsbourg-france-habituallychic-021