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Singer Jane Birkin, of ‘Birkin Bag’ Fame, Dies at 76

The English-French actress had a stroke in 2021.

Jane Birkin, the singer and actress whose conversation with then-Hermes CEO Jean-Louis Dumas inspired the Birkin bag, has died, according to French media. She was 76. Birkin rose to fame in France despite her U.K. upbringing, finding success with her song “Je t'aime... moi non plus.” Hermes named its iconic Birkin bag after the singer following a conversation between Dumas and Birkin on a plane in the early 1980s, in which he he noticed the mother-of-two did not have a proper handbag to store all her belongings, according to the BBC. Birkin’s death came two months after she canceled a number of concerts for health reasons and two years after a stroke forced her to pull out of a film festival in France.