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She was a figure out of fiction, right down to her Jane Austen name. The daughter of a baroness and a British major (a spy during World War II), Marianne Faithfull \u2014 who died this week at 78<\/a> \u2014 was discovered by the Rolling Stones\u2019 manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, at a record release party in the 1960s while still in her teens. \u201cMy first move was to get a Rolling Stone as a boyfriend,\u201d she was often quoted as having said. \u201cI slept with three and decided the lead singer was the best bet.\u201d<\/p>\n The bet paid off for both parties. Mick Jagger and Ms. Faithfull dated from 1966-70 and during that time she recorded a series of pop songs, most memorably \u201cAs Tears Go By.\u201d Mr. Jagger wrote imperishable Stones hits like \u201cWild Horses\u201d under the direct inspiration of Ms. Faithfull \u2014 lovely, feckless, druggie and unfettered. She was \u201ca wonderful friend,\u201d Mr. Jagger wrote on Instagram this week, \u201ca beautiful singer and a great actress.\u201d<\/p>\n She was also a style paragon from the outset.<\/p>\n \u201cShe seemed to touch all the moments, from Mod to rich hippie to bad girl and punk, corsets to leather to the nun outfit she wore when she performed with Bowie,\u201d the designer Anna Sui said this week by phone. \u201cShe was there, through all those periods \u2014 performing, participating in events, acting and singing and also in the tabloids, very much in the eyes of anybody loving those periods.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A British journalist once described Ms. Faithfull, in the late 1960s, as \u201cthe flowing-haired, miniskirted, convention-knocking epitome\u201d of a \u201cdrug generation\u201d that her elders were challenged to understand. What more accurately she epitomized was a spirit of bohemian laissez-faire better located in class than any particular era.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Cultured, if not conventionally educated, Ms. Faithfull was as offhand about her looks as only a natural beauty could afford to be. And she was as indifferent to the straight-jacketing conventions of the bourgeoisie as those of her background (she spent her early years in an upscale commune her father founded in Oxfordshire) often are.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ms. Faithfull was still a young girl when her parents divorced. Her mother \u2014 a descendant of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the author of \u201cVenus in Furs,\u201d that ur-text of masochism \u2014 took her to live 40 miles outside London in Reading. There she opened the Carillon, a tea shop, and sent her daughter to the local Catholic boarding school.<\/p>\n It can seem hard to square the louche image of what the English daily The Independent once referred to as \u201crock\u2019s primary horizontale\u201d with that of a young Marianne Faithfull traipsing to St. Joseph\u2019s Catholic School in the uniform of a brown cape and a brown-and-yellow felt hat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n She did, in fact, become someone whose sexual antics (along with two-thirds of the Stones, she also had liaisons with Jimi Hendrix, Chris Blackwell and both David and Angela Bowie) and descent into heroin addiction were well chronicled. Yet the hard-living Ms. Faithfull retained throughout a degree of propriety and even hauteur, an aura of willful disregard usually associated with the English upper classes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Certainly few female performers in music history have cycled through as many personas as Ms. Faithfull did, from the kittenish Mod dolly of her early career to a prim fashion plate and then an avatar of tailored ambisexual chic. She portrayed herself as a corseted diva in kink drag, a punk apparition with a Vaseline quiff, even the nun in robes and wimple<\/a>, Ms. Sui cited.<\/p>\n \u201cActually, nothing says Marianne Faithfull to me like \u2018The Girl on a Motorcycle,\u2019\u201d the filmmaker Amos Poe wrote in a text message to this reporter. He was specifically referring to a poster image from the director Jack Cardiff\u2019s erotic drama of 1968, in which Ms. Faithfull starred alongside Alain Delon. On the poster, she bestrides a Harley-Davidson clad in full biker leathers, a vision of sulky sexuality.<\/p>\n \u201cFor years, it was the poster on my wall,\u201d Mr. Poe wrote, \u201cand the image in my mind of pure pop.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Transiting a life of astonishing highs and gutter lows, Ms. Faithfull never lost an innate rock-chick brio forged in the Swinging Sixties, shared by few (Keith Richards\u2019s ex-wife, the Italian-German actress Anita Pallenberg<\/a>, is a notable example) and admired by countless designers, actors, models and directors. Somehow, she managed to make even dishevelment look chic. \u201cI\u2019ll never forget her telling me, after my daughter was born, that I\u2019d have to quit being a perfectionist,\u201d the director Sofia Coppola said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Glancing at images from the recent men\u2019s wear runway shows in Europe, it is easy to detect how durable Ms. Faithfull\u2019s influence remains. Kate Moss teetering across the cobblestones of Paris en route to the Dior Men show in a scanty slip dress and what looked to be a vintage monkey fur jacket was pure Faithfull. In fact, Ms. Moss so closely modeled her style over the years that Ms. Faithfull was eventually moved to denounce her onetime pal as a style \u201cvampire.\u201d<\/p>\n No matter. In the end, Marianne Faithfull was inimitable in voice, outlook and image.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been listening to her remarkable 2018 album, \u2018Negative Capability,\u2019 and marveling again at her passage from innocent schoolgirl thrush, via rock stars and heroin, to her reinvention as a radically honest, scar-voiced chanteuse,\u201d the author Lucy Sante wrote to this reporter in a private Instagram message.<\/p>\n Much like a character from one of the Kurt Weill songs Ms. Faithfull covered \u2014 in a graveled rasp that attested to every cigarette, injection and drink she had ever consumed \u2014 Ms. Faithfull was never less than compelling to observe. She commanded attention through the simplest of means, as Ms. Sante noted, \u201cby laying all her cards on the table.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n