Marisa Meltzer, IT GIRL: The Life and Legacy of Jane Birkin
Totally Booked with Zibby
Zibby Owens
4.5 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 29 October 2025
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Totally Booked: LIVE! In this special episode of the podcast (in-person at the Whitby Hotel with a live audience!), Zibby interviews journalist and New York Times bestselling author Marisa Meltzer about her dazzling and intimate new book, IT GIRL: The Life and Legacy of Jane Birkin. Together, they explore the iconic muse’s complex life beyond the famed Hermès bag, from her bohemian beginnings and creative triumphs to the deep personal losses that shaped her. Marisa shares what drew her to Birkin’s story, her research adventures in Paris, and what she’s learned from studying a woman who lived boldly, loved deeply, and refused to conform.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Totally Booked Live here at the Whitby Hotel in New York City, where we are having |
| 0:07.8 | season two of amazing guests coming on in person to talk about their fabulous books. And today |
| 0:14.6 | we have Marissa Meltzer, who has written It Girl, The Life and Legacy of Jane Birken. |
| 0:21.3 | Marissa was on my podcast already once before, and it is a delight to have you back. Welcome. |
| 0:25.8 | I'm so happy to be back. Thank you for having me. Thank you for being here. |
| 0:29.8 | Okay, we've gone from Weight Watchers, the topic of your last book, and really the founder |
| 0:36.1 | and Gene Natick and all of that. And you had another book. |
| 0:38.9 | And now we're back to It Girl. Why Jane Birken? How do you pick your topics? Why this book now? |
| 0:44.9 | Well, Jane Berkin is kind of at the nexus of all my nerdiest interests in a lot of ways. |
| 0:50.9 | Like, I was always, for better or for worse, a Francophile. |
| 0:54.8 | I loved music and film. |
| 0:57.4 | And, of course, I've spent a lot of my career writing about fashion. |
| 1:00.4 | And so it just seemed like I knew enough about her life, but I knew that I didn't know enough |
| 1:08.2 | that there would be a lot to uncover in a story there. |
| 1:11.5 | And, you know, just wanted to explore a woman who had been kind of seen as a muse her whole life |
| 1:18.8 | or whose name is more famous as bag than as a person. |
| 1:24.9 | And, yeah. |
| 1:25.9 | Did you get a bag from Hermes? Did they give you one to say thanks for the book? |
| 1:30.7 | No. Hermes is not giving anyone a bag. But my hope is that I don't expect a free bag from anyone, but my |
| 1:40.5 | hope is sometime on this book tour, someone will be like, I was going to sell my bag to the |
| 1:44.5 | real real, but I'll just give it to you for like a good deal so I don't have to deal with the intake |
| 1:49.8 | process or something like that. I want a hotline on a used blackburken or something. |
... |
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