Happy Birthday Jane Birkin! A Look Back at the Icon’s Best Beauty Moments

A look back at Jane Birkin’s most iconic beauty moments, from the Swinging ’60s to present day, in honor of her 74th birthday.

“If someone had only told me to get rid of the eye makeup sooner!” Jane Birkin once lamented to Vogue. Birkin, who turns 74 today, is speaking of the Swinging ’60s, when she decamped from her native England and landed in France with exaggerated etchings and layers of lower-lash mascara.

Fast-forward to the following decade, when the gap-toothed gamine abandoned her heavy hand to embrace a more au naturel approach. As she later noted, “It was nice because then you looked like what you looked like in the morning.” It’s this effortless élan, now immortalized on countless Instagram feeds, that has come to symbolize Birkin, defining laissez-faire beauty for a whole new generation of French-girls-in-training.

No matter whether her long lengths have been haphazardly piled atop her head or shorn short as she stands onstage in a cashmere pull and faded jeans, the actress, singer, and songwriter has long espoused the kind of fresh facade that’s achieved not with a coveted cosmetic but rather, simply, a smile. “It takes 10 years off!” she’s famously quipped. Consider it sage advice for the New Year ahead.

Below, a look at Jane Birkin’s best beauty moments.

1966

Photo: Alamy

1969

Photo: Getty Images

1970

Photographed by John Cowan, Vogue, January 1970

1973

Photo: Everett

1974

Photo: Getty Images

1975

Photo: Getty Images

1975

Photo: Getty Images

1980

Photo: Getty Images

1982

Photo: Getty Images

1987

Photo: Getty Images

1990

Photo: Getty Images

1992

Photo: Getty Images

2001

Photo: Getty Images

2002

Photo: Getty Images

2019

Photo: Getty Images

This story originally appeared on: Vogue - Author:Zoe Ruffner