An Autre Mode - Another Way of Being

Celebrating the Timeless Elegance of Jane Birkin

I didn’t live Jane Birkin’s life. But I walked close, through the same arrondissements, with a camera in one hand, and dreams too fragile to speak aloud in the other.

Paris in the aftermath, after May ’68, after Gainsbourg, after glory.

But the echoes were everywhere: In the awkward songs, the shutter click, the silences between Depeche Mode lyrics in a dim French apartment, right after Kiki left.

Back then, Depeche Mode played on loop in every second-floor flat, but outside, in every car, at every corner, it was The Scorpions.

“Still Loving You,” loud, everywhere, unbearably sincere. They weren’t cool to me, but here’s the irony: They came from my hometown, Langenhagen.

Mathias Jabs, the guitarist, lived next door. He gave me guitar lessons before joining the band that would one day echoed through Paris like a broken vow.

One city, two soundtracks—one whispered, one wailed. And somewhere between them:

“It’s a question of lust.

It’s a question of trust.

It’s a question of not letting what we’ve built up,

crumble to dust.”

Martin Gore said it best.

So did Sartre, in a different key: existence precedes essence. But what if existence also wore kohl eyeliner and carried a basket?

Jane didn’t theorize her way through life like Simone de Beauvoir. She just was vulnerable, unscripted, draped in linen, barefoot through the corridors of cool.

A kind of existential femininity not unlike what Roland Barthes might call a myth, but one performed with disarming sincerity.

I didn’t smoke, but I admired the way cigarettes filled a Lindbergh frame.

Back then, cigarettes weren’t vices, they were visual punctuation. Like Jane, a comma in the sentence, never a full stop.

This site isn’t nostalgia. It’s recognition.

Of one time, a tone

Jane Birkin, the undisputed icon of non-traditional French chic, and the muse who inspired one of the most iconic handbags in the world.