Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library tonight. A bit of housekeeping before we start: please silence your phones so that everyone can enjoy the event. There are men's and women's restrooms on this floor. We have additional women's restrooms on the third and fifth floors and men's restrooms on the second and fourth floors. In New York City, all persons have the right to use the restroom consistent with their gender identity or gender expression. All events at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library are subject to recording and photography. Thank you, and enjoy the program.
Good evening, and welcome to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library. My name is Mariana Vertsman. I will be your host for tonight. Thank you. I work in the world language department right here in this building, and for those of you that are interested, we have a lot of books in French. Okay, tonight we have a wonderful presentation, but before we can go on with it, I would like to thank the Stavros Niarchos Foundation for making programs like this possible. If you don't already have a library card, you can get access to one in any of our service point locations. And we're also encouraging you to look up the rest of the lineup for the Seven Stories Up programs for this season and the winter of 2027.
Tonight's program: Marissa Meltzer with Vanessa Friedman, It Girl, the life and legacy of Jane Birkin, pays tribute to a legend. I will introduce the speakers right now. The author, Marissa Meltzer, is a journalist based in New York. She has over two decades of experience covering beauty, fashion, wellness, and celebrity for top national publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, and Vanity Fair. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller It Girl, Glossy, This Is Big, How Sassy Changed My Life, and Girl Power. Her conversation partner is Vanessa Friedman. She is the fashion director and chief fashion critic of The New York Times. She focuses on fashion as an expression of political, social, and cultural identity at specific moments in time. Before joining The Times in 2014, Vanessa wrote for the Financial Times for 11 years. She graduated from Princeton University with a BA in history and lives in Brooklyn with her family. Please welcome our presenters.
Marissa is much more dainty about her entrance than I am.
It's because I don't—I'm afraid I won't be able to take the big step without, like, using my hands or tripping or something, and I can't risk it.
Anyway, thanks everyone for coming. This is going to be fun. And what I want to know to start is: what is an It Girl?
An It Girl—I mean, it is very sort of, you know it when you see it, like porn. It's ephemeral. I think to me the most important part of being an It Girl is that someone has to give it to you—you can't call yourself an it girl, which I think is a problem with a lot of social media influencers or people that, you know, give themselves the title. And yeah, I mean, sometimes I wonder: do you have to be young to be an it girl? Can you be, you know, an it woman or...
Did you have a definition when you started the book?
No, it definitely evolved. I mean, it wasn't like I had one that changed, but I think that I just thought so much about the idea of what does it mean to be an it girl. Like, it's a combination of at least the sense of you being kind of everywhere, important, and seen and photographed. And then thinking about Jane Birkin as kind of the ultimate it girl, at least of the 20th century—you know, dating someone famous, coming from a vague pedigree, like a, you know, fancy family helps. Being sort of creative, but in this broad sense of dabbling in music and fashion and film helps, but yeah.
People like you. People like us, maybe.
The person who gives the title to the book.
I was going to say the media. Yeah, I think it has to be someone outside. I think it probably often is writers and editors, especially—you know, at that time Jane Birkin was in tabloids a lot for her relationships, but one of the first things she was in was the Daily Mail in the mid-60s. That was like 'girls to watch for,' I think, 1964. And I think Charlotte Rampling was another one. You know, it was a sort of a crowd, and I think things like that started where you're one to watch, and then you become an it girl before maybe you become more of an established celebrity or something like that. But I think the media helps. Now I would think it would maybe be people online. I don't know. What do you think?
I mean, one of the things I thought that was interesting about the book is that, you know, you think of it as being a positive title, right? You want to be an it girl. If you're an it girl, you're cool. You have something that other people don't have—but I feel like you—things that people are always like, 'Oh, no, no, no.' You know, like being called a hipster or something. Like, 'Well, she's an it girl. I'm just going to the opening of an envelope.'
But it is also like just the word. It's so—it almost is defined by what? By the fact that it's impossible to pin it down. Like, its vagueness—the vagueness is the point of it, which is very irritating.
Have you ever called someone an it girl in writing, or is that just too cliché?
I do not think so. Well, I would have to hope I didn't. I'm sure I have. I can't think of any other than this book, obviously, but I feel like I have, and it's one of those things that I'll write it and I'll call someone a starlet, and I think everyone also knows that I'm being kind of—I don't know, facetious or something—and then an editor is like, 'Why would you? Don't use that.'
Right, right. But do you think that it is a sort of dismissive title in the end? Because it felt that way a bit reading the book—that you felt like Birkin was actually a bigger, more multidimensional person than the title conveys?
I think it depends on who you are. I think in the case of Jane Birkin, yes, because I think the world had and continues to have a hard time seeing her as something more than the girl with the bangs who's cooing in songs and, you know, now has a famous bag named after her, which is a very, like, it girl thing. So in that case, yes. But then I think in other cases—you know, like Gwyneth Paltrow was once an it girl, but Gwyneth Paltrow was able to become an Oscar winner, and now she's, I guess, an entrepreneur and other things, and that's part of her legacy, but I don't think that that's what would be in her obituary necessarily. Whereas Jane Birkin, yes. Maybe Chloë Sevigny, probably yes—you know, like, 'it girl of the 90s dies' or something like that.
Didn't Jay McInerney call her that?
So which came first, the it girl or the it bag?
Oh, I think the it girl. I think the bag took longer. I mean, certainly in the case of Jane Birkin, she was called an it girl in the 60s, and the Birkin wasn't around until the mid-1980s. But yeah, I think bags were a bit different, right? Like, people didn't cycle through them in the same way.
Not until the 90s, right? That was the... of it.
Yeah, I think so. Yeah, because one of the reasons why the Birkin bag kind of rose was because Hermès was really making so much of its money on silk for years, and everyone wore the scarves, and then people stopped wearing scarves as much. And so by the 80s, they had to find other ways to make money, and so it was like, 'We'll go all in on handbags.'
Except that the irony of this is that the Birkin is not an it bag, right? The Birkin is an eternal bag.
I actually want a Birkin now. I mean, I also feel like I want one because I've spent so much time on it, more than anyone else—
How did you not buy yourself a Birkin as a present for this?
You're a writer. Like, you know how much we're paid. I don't have that kind of casual spending money, unfortunately. They're so expensive.
From your mouth to God's ears. But no, I don't have one. They're wildly expensive. I kept thinking—and this is my continued fantasy—that after a reading like this, some woman who I've never met before is like, 'My grandmother is trying to get rid of stuff, and she has this Birkin, and she doesn't feel like going through the hassle of selling it. Like, she wants it to go to a good home, like a rescue dog. And, you know, you can just have it for like $1,500,' and then that's how I'll get it. It hasn't happened yet, but the fantasy is real, and you all—
Guys, anyone? Any takers?
I'll be at the table signing books and can take down your grandma's number. But no, I do want a Birkin now that they've sort of—they've kind of crossed into being a little tacky.
I think some of the people that wear them now, or like the green ones, or I think they're associated with reality TV a little bit, or—
Actually, I think now they're associated with football players.
Oh, this is how out of it I am. That's cool. But yeah, I think I would like a Birkin now. There are other ones that I used to want, like a Plume or a Bolide, that are very tasteful, but now, you know, every Instagram girl who's into quiet luxury is like, 'Oh, but the Bolide,' or whatever. And so I'm over it.
All right, so what's your dream Birkin, if you could have any one?
Simple, honestly. Like, I think a 25, 30 cm in a dark color. I would love like a dark, like a kind of Jaguar racing green kind of Birkin color, or—but honestly, I don't really have a black bag, so I would love black, like a black box. I would also totally take a beat-up croc.
You could spend a lot of time thinking about this.
But apart—like, researching the bag was part of your research for the book, right?
For sure, yeah. I listened and read and thought a lot about Hermès the company because I wanted to kind of, you know—I wanted the chapter about the Birkin bag to be a little bit of a break from the Jane Birkin story, and kind of gets into—I wanted to give a real, you know, kaleidoscopic view of how the bag came to be and how it became what it is, because it is kind of more famous than she is, at least in America. And then also, I was in Paris working on the book and then writing a piece for The New York Times on the bag designer at Hermès. And so I also got to go into the workshop and watch them make the Birkin bags and see where people got theirs repaired. And, you know, there were other bags being worked on, but I believe the Birkin takes the most work, or at least maybe of the non-custom bags.
And did watching it be made make you think, 'Okay, this is actually worth it'?
Unfortunately, yes. I feel like I'm such a sucker. Such a sucker. They are born every minute, and I mean, I've also been someone that buys green juice gummies thinking that that would do the trick of, I don't know, eating vegetables. So yeah, I fall for a lot of things, but including going to Hermès and just being completely entranced. I mean, you know, part of it is we are not often in workshops where people are doing their job well and also seem happy. Like, oh, there's so much natural light, and they had jokes printed out, and, you know, it seemed like everyone who worked there was having a great time—a good combination of serious and relaxed.
They had a beautiful—like a beautiful but homey cafeteria that had framed Hermès scarves on the wall, and then they also had like a lot of funny things—like their first bad attempt at a Birkin that would be on their desk, and then those apparently get sold at company sales. So you can buy a Birkin that didn't pass muster and had to be redone, but it's like 150 euros or something for company employees, you know.
Like that would end up being worth more than the bag.
I kept being like, 'Could I—is there a way?' Yeah, there's even—I think there's a company store in Pantin, where the main—it's just outside of Paris, where the main Hermès offices are, and I kept thinking, like, 'Will you just allow me in?' Like once I was touring Nike, and Nike famously has this employees-only, basically wholesale-price store. I have been there, too, and I just happened to be there visiting someone, and she was like, 'Oh, I can get you in.' And I'm not even a Nike person. I bought the weirdest—I don't have them anymore, but I bought like gladiator-sandal Nikes just because I could, and they were like $40 or something. What did you buy? What did you buy?
I bought some high-top black, like, faux-croc sneakers. Which I still have. I don't wear them very much.
Faux croc—I mean, faux croc, very, like—
You get, like, carried away. They were sort of like a cool dinosaur-skin kind of.
Oh, wow. Yeah, they have really weird stuff in there, and I was texting a friend who is like a sneaker guy, and he kept being like, 'This, this, and this, and this size.' And they didn't... it's like they have weird stuff.
Yeah, 'cause it's like the leftover stuff that nobody actually— bras, too. Yeah.
But I kept thinking like maybe someone will just be like, 'Go into the Hermès store.' Or once I think I was doing a story on The North Face, and then they were like, 'Oh, and now that you're at the store, take whatever you want and we'll give you, you know, 30% off today.' And I definitely bought like a puffer jacket I still have, and I kept thinking, 'I know Hermès is not going to do this, but I kind of wish they would.' And they did not.
All right, so you fell for the bag. Did you fall for the girl, too? Did you?
Yeah, I did. Also kind of like—not against my will, but I went into the book definitely being interested and fascinated and a fan of Jane Birkin, but in kind of a casual way, which I think is probably a good way to go into writing a biography of someone, because if you're so into them and you love them, I think it's probably harder to see, you know, their humanity or their dark sides or where they made bad decisions. And so I liked that part of why I wanted to do the book was to show her as, you know, beyond the bag, as a person with good sides and bad sides and all of that. But yeah, there were times when I found her really annoying.
I think there's a certain girlishness that she just never—that she would trot out more often. Like, it started to die down in maybe the 90s, but, you know, there's a point where she's like 40 and she still has bangs and she's talking in that whispery voice, and she still—even though she's lived in France forever—she still has this very strong British accent. To that point, it feels a little put on. And also, I'm not a very romantic person, and she was so big-love romance—like, reading her diaries is all about just, 'And then I met this guy and we're so in love,' and it's like, it's been two weeks and also you're 57. I don't know, I just don't have that in me at all. That's not my personality type, and so that would drive me insane. You're like, 'Really, again?'
But I want to go back to something for a second. Are you saying you can't have bangs after 40?
That's a great question. I definitely—no, I definitely think you can, and she looked great with them, but it was more the hair not changing and the style kind of remaining the same. But then she left Serge Gainsbourg and she kind of cut it and started dressing very differently—kind of like I am right now, if I'm being honest, except she wore a lot of sneakers. But you know, she wore trousers and men's shirts, and she had a bob for a while, she had a perm for a while. I just think she felt a little unchanged, a girl, even though she was someone who had a 20-year-old daughter and was 40 and had lived a life. And to me that felt kind of indicative or symbolic of her not maybe wanting herself to be seen as a grown-up, or maybe she wasn't ready. What do you think, people can have bangs over 40?
It really depends on their foreheads. Have you? I've never—I don't really have the hair for it. I have a huge cowlick. I have curly hair. I don't think I'd look good with bangs. Have you ever had them?
Okay, yeah, you and I are not bangs people. Uh-uh. Yeah.
But I have had the same hairdo for a long time, so I'm wondering—maybe I should change it.
Wait, you're going to start wearing it barrel curls down? What would you do?
I don't know. What do you think? This is like a whole conversation you guys were not expecting, isn't it?
This is my problem: I could say smart things, but instead I really do just want to workshop your next haircut in front of everyone.
Okay, you think about it for a while.
I think one of those bixies—the pixie bobs, like Winona Ryder in Reality Bites—would be cute on you.
No, those are like way too much work.
Okay, then we do need to talk about what would be an appropriate hairdo. All right, so if you were annoyed by some things about her, where were your points of connection?
Oh, that's a great question. I—you know, like on a kind of surface, corny level, I love Paris. It sounds so trite and clichéd to say, but I do. I've always—I went there for my last year of college, and it was kind of disappointing in that I thought I would have one experience and I had a different one, which was good, but it wasn't like, 'And then I fell in love with a guy and he was actually a prince and he was also best friends with Daft Punk,' and like, and no one ever made fun of my accent. You know, it was reality and not the fantasy.
Wait, so what was the reality?
The reality was I dated a guy who worked at Agnès B.—Agnès B. Lolita, which was actually their problematically named juniors line. And also weird that they had a 22-year-old guy working there, but you know. And I wore a lot of APC jeans. I think this was before the New York store was open, so it was really a big deal to me. And I had weird friends from school, but I found them a bit—this is so weird to say, but I found them a bit immature and childish because they all lived with their parents, and for some reason everyone that I went to school with was just really into animated movies and comic books, which are huge in France, and I just thought that was like—I was too sophisticated for that. It's just not my personal taste. So I wasn't making the best friends of my life, and I was dating a guy that worked at APC and it was great, and I had a really good time, and I learned a lot about myself in terms of how American I am and how American I'm not, and a lot of my core taste and preferences, like for food and decor and art, were really, I think, kind of solidified or maybe even calcified in those years. Like, my comfort food is still cheese plates and baguettes and steak frites and—
