Where have all the chic women gone?
There are plenty of fashionable creatures around nowadays. But truly chic ones? They exited the building when Jane Birkin passed last weekend. Here's why...
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The news that Jane Birkin died last week, reached me, as most deaths do nowadays, via a flurry of sentimental Instagram posts. Broken heart emojis and various hashtags declaring things like #RIPicon or #styleforever footnoted pictures of the dolly-eyed star as the female contingent of the world collectively mourned.
I gasped when I found out. Though of course, it was not a shock. Birkin was after all approaching 80, and like all stars tip-toeing towards the end had largely retreated from public life. But still, her death felt greater than the loss of a singular person. It felt like the doors to another time had closed. Because what Birkin represented was a form of style that rarely, if at all, exists nowadays. And is the concept of what it means to be chic.
Think about it- today the women whose style we look to are mostly cool. Or on-trend. Or that most ridiculous of phrases, fashion-forward. Younger generations meanwhile rest their fashionable aspirations on those the world sees as ‘fierce’ or ‘on point’- Beyonce, Emily Ratajkowski, Hailey Bieber. Chic seems to have not only exited the lexicon, but to have left this earth altogether.
Of course chic has always been hard to define. And its elusiveness has always been part of its appeal. I suppose you could say chic is about being quietly distinct rather than passionately individual; catching eyes rather than turning heads. Head-to-toe Loro Piana is not chic; but it is good taste. And any with enough money can buy taste. A pair of Khaite jeans, an old vintage T-shirt and (artfully) ‘disheveled’ hair is cool, but not chic. And a woman whose every item of clothing you coo after, whether it’s a nondescript dress or a pair of scuffed trainers, is probably just very stylish. But I doubt she is chic.
So who is chic exactly? You probably think Jackie O was chic. But you’d be wrong. She was exquisitely put together but not chic. Princess Diana? Never. Her mode of being was too self-conscious for a start. Grace Jones perhaps? Not by a long shot. The singer wears her individuality with far too much bombast to ever be considered chic.
Bianca Jagger had moments of it. So too did the late Joan Didion. The artist Georgia O’Keeffe was almost certainly chic- with her long customary black overalls, with a splash of white shirt just beneath and her always tied back in a severe bun. And so is Tilda Swindon, but only when you catch her off ‘fashion duty’. But mostly I struggle to think of anyone in these modern times, who could ever be described as chic. I think they probably exist in distant corners of the English countryside. Or maybe on an artist’s colony somewhere outside Mexico City. (Mexico City now having become something of a mecca for the cool and stylish).
I do however remember, not so long ago, one of the chicest women I have ever seen walk into a grocery store. It was one of those very posh grocery stores in the depths of The Cotswolds; an idealised version of what a grocery store should be, with rows of organic produce that was better looking than most of the well-heeled customers. It was close to 6pm and as such the tills were closing down for the evening. Suddenly there was a crunch of gravel, as a small, slightly beaten up Citroen pulled up outside. A woman, of indeterminate age scurried out with a brown hessian shopper with a hole in the corner. ( Was she 40? 50? 60? It was impossible to tell- agelessness being one of chic’s keenest proponents). She smiled at everyone and apologised for being so late, then raced around the store with all the hurried grace of a carrier bird. She wore very little make-up, though it is true she was blessed with the sort of cheekbones that gave her an automatic air of hauteur. But what was most astonishing was her outfit. Se wore soft grey leggings and a pale camel jumper with bright orange patches at the elbows. Not fake patches either. No, these were patches lovingly stitched on by someone who cared for an item of clothing the way most people care for a cherished pet. But the best bit was her socks. They were thick, of the most divine cashmere variety, almost like bed socks really, pulled high up to her knees. Given she was wearing old brown ankle boots, the look was one part madness, two parts dazzling originality. I stared. And stared. And yet everything came together- her manners, her way of being, the bed socks, the old grey leggings, to form a picture that felt at once natural, timeless and oddly very chic. This was a woman who dressed only for herself. But in doing so pulled others into her orbit.
And that I think is the very essence of chic- the idea of dressing for purpose and pleasure. It is why a £3000 rain mac looks so odd on an urban dweller (no matter how stylish it is). Or why those Golden Goose, pre-tarnished trainers have always looked so dreadfully fashion victim. For a truly chic person, clothes are worn as an expression of who they are; rather than a way to express who they would like to be.
And I think that is why the world struggles to find chic examples nowadays. The culture has become so much crueler, commodified and driven by attention and surface that it leaves little space for chic. Kim Kardashain will never be chic, because every outfit for her is a cynical tactic- whether that tactic is to gather column inches or flog you a pair of SKIMS knickers. And social media with its #outfitoftheday mindset, seldom rewards those with a ‘hushed’ sense of style. Best dressed lists and big fat fancy fashion contracts mean celebrities now rely on others to dress them. And where once upon a time street photographers such as Scott Schuman were able to catch an occasional glimpse of a truly chic woman out on the streets of Milan, say, nowadays everyone dresses for their own street style moment. On other words, the world has become too self-conscience to leave any room for chic.
I will leave you then with a reminder of what chic really looks. It is an image of Jane Birken, taken some time around the mid-80s I imagine. She is sat with that mile-wide, gap-toothed grin that was always cheer than any Hermes bag. On her feet are a pair of old white plimsoles and she wears nothing more than an old cardigan and a pair of sky-blue jeans. Though she was famous for her style in her twenties, it was when she reached her 40s that she famously said she felt her most at ease. But the most starling thing about the image is the eponymous Birkin bag by her feet. The bag, as many of you will know, was named after her after a chance encounter with Hermes CEO Jean Louis-Dumas. The two were seated next to one another on a plane and as Birkin went to put her wicker basket away the entire contents of her bag fell to the ground. In response over the course of the flight the two devised a bag big enough to accommodate a woman’s entire belongings and thus the £10,000 Birkin bag was born.
Naturally Jane Birkin did not wear her bag like everyone else. Instead she cradled it like a child, decked it out with personal charms and beads and even, much later, sacrilegiously adorned it with various stickers and photographs that she used to Cellotape to the calf skin leather. It is the chicest thing you will ever see.
So what is the secret to chic? And can you create it? Below is my guide to how you can at least try….