Essentially an elevated shift dress with cropped sleeves, the Jane Birkin Dress evokes blissful days on the Riviera, even if the closest you’re getting to a Euro summer is an off-brand Fanta Lemon from the corner shop. Search for one online, though, and you’ll quickly find yourself buried beneath the kind of figure-hugging bodycon creations best left in a New Look changing room circa 2012, rather than the breezy, insouciant staple Birkin made her own. (I should know, having spent many an hour trawling Vinted for variations of “mini dress long-sleeve black”.)
Jane Birkin in 1969.
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Indeed, there is much to be said for wearing nothing but dresses in the summer months. After all, who can be bothered with coordinating multiple items of clothing when you’ve already got a packed schedule of complaining about the heat and reapplying the same concealer that keeps sliding off? Better still – although perhaps less urgently than those early-aughts women’s magazines would have had us believe – the Jane Birkin Dress transitions from day to night with ease. Whether worn with sensible ballet flats or vertiginous heels, it works just as well for a morning coffee run as it does for an impromptu dinner.
