Jane & Serge

The passionate thirteen-year-long love affair between British actress/singer Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg, the famous French musician with a notorious character and 18 years her senior, is one for the history books...

"They met when he was 40 and she was 22, on the set of the 1969 movie Slogan. . . Wanting to get to know him better, and upset by his dismissive attitude, she orchestrated a dinner with him and the film's director. After dinner, she and Serge danced, and when he stepped on her toes, she realized that this man she thought arrogant was really very shy. That first night, he took her to a transvestite bar, then a club where the American blues singer Joe Turner sang, then to a Russian nightclub, and then to the Hilton Hotel, where the desk clerk asked, "Your usual room, Mr. Gainsbourg?" Nothing sexual happened that night, because he fell asleep, but very quickly they became inseparable. They went to Venice, stayed in a corner suite in the Gritti Palace, drank at Harry's Bar every night, and fell madly in love.
When they first returned to Paris they stayed at L'Hôtel, where Oscar Wilde had died. They then moved to Rue de Verneuil, where Serge selected every piece of furniture and designed everything in the house. "Serge had seen Dalí's house and was very struck by the fact that he had black astrakhan on the walls," says Jane. "So Serge wanted black on his walls, but he wanted it to be felt, the special felt that was used for policemen's trousers.
He could never take any change. After I had Charlotte, when she got so big that her legs came out of the crib I said, 'I must buy her a bed, Serge, without offending your eye,' and he said, 'Put socks on her.' I never saw him take a bath. He was the cleanest man I ever knew, he knew how to wash all the bits, but in 13 years I never saw him take a bath, I never saw him go to the loo, I never saw him completely naked, the children never saw him naked—and they tried like mad. He was very pudique." (The closest translation of this word in English is shy, modest, discreet.) "If he had seen me giving birth to Charlotte, it's possible he never would have slept with me again, and I wasn't taking that chance. He always paid his taxes early: he felt he was an immigrant—his parents were from Russia and as such he should behave correctly. He wanted shoes that felt like gloves, so I got him white Repetto ballet shoes, which he wore without socks. I bought him jewelry and encouraged him to keep a three-day stubble on his face. He sat in gilt chairs after fashion shows and picked out dresses for me—Balenciaga, Yves Saint Laurent, Givenchy. Every New Year's Eve we would go to Maxim's and he would liken it to being on the Titanic because everyone was so much older, and I would nick the ashtrays and the cutlery." . . .
She describes their daily routine in the 1970s as follows: they woke up at three in the afternoon; she picked up the children at school and took them to the park, brought them home for a children's dinner, the au pair would give them a bath, and when the children went to bed she and Serge would kiss them good night and go out on the town. They'd come back "with the dustman," wait until the children woke up at 7:30, then go to sleep. Their alcohol-fueled nights would often turn, as Jane puts it, "barmy." Once, at Castel's nightclub, on the Rue Princesse on the Left Bank, Serge turned over the basket that she carried as a handbag, emptying its contents onto the floor. Furious, she managed to find a custard pie and threw it in his face. He walked out; she whizzed by him in the street and headed straight for the river and, after she was sure he was watching, flung herself into the Seine. She was rescued by firemen, Serge was relieved she was alive,
and they walked back to the Rue de Verneuil arm in arm."
(Vanity Fair, Nov. 2007)
























































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