The culture of fashion: Agnès B
French Girl Style – it’s the aesthetic that just won’t stop giving. And with the Paris Olympics mere hours away, you’d better buckle up, as it’s about to become even more omnipresent. The reason French Girl Style aka garconne style resonates is its timelessness, its realness, and its rooted-in-utility-ness. Oh, and something else really important – culture.
And who better to illustrate this point than Agnès B? Although, despite her independently-owned, 51-year-old business with 231 stores globally (137 in Japan alone), Agnès doesn’t care to talk about ‘Fashion’. Her collections are classic-casual, ageless and deliberately anti-fashion.
Instead, she’d much rather discuss her love for the arts and myriad ways of supporting and showcasing art, film, music and culture in general. An accidental designer, she has no formal fashion training but studied drawing in Versailles and dreamed of being a museum curator. Which explains her natural instinct for spotting talent and befriending artists. “Yes, all my friends are artists and musicians. I don’t have bankers or people like that as friends!” she told me during her recent SS25 menswear presentation in Paris.
Her artist friendships are well documented but some notable examples: she was among the first to exhibit Ryan McGinley’s photography after meeting him at a party; she spotted Jean-Michel Basquiat’s early work on the New York subway then befriended him shortly before he died; she has supported Harmony Korine’s films since 1999 and shows his paintings in her gallery; and she designed Chet Baker’s wardrobe for Bruce Weber’s poetic 1988 documentary, ‘Let’s Get Lost’.
She also famously wardrobed David Bowie after seeing him perform in Paris during his 70s Berlin era, “wearing all these German brown pleats”. She sent him a pair of black leather jeans with a note recommending he rethink his stage wear. He promptly asked her to dress him. “We were great friends for 25 years. His last album, which is very moving was called Blackstar, and Jimmy King, [his photographer] told me, ‘It’s because of your T-shirt – he was always wearing your khaki T-shirt with the black star.’”
As a major cinephile, Agnès has produced and supported documentaries and art films, and allowed cult directors to borrow her clothes to save on costume hire costs. Being anti-fashion, her white shirts (think Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction, above), men’s suits (for Steve Buscemi and Harvey Keitel in Reservoir Dogs, below) and stripy tees (for William Klein’s Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? below) are perfect supporting characters in classic movies. “Quentin Tarantino went to the shop we had in L.A and that’s how I came to dress [the cast of] Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction,” she recalls. “I love him very much; we always spend time talking in Cannes and Paris. I’m lucky to have been close to people like Basquiat and Tarantino. They have shown confidence in me.”
While on a 48-hour visit to Paris last month, I stopped by Agnès’s La Fab art space on Place Jean-Michel Basquiat. The vast Gallerie du Jour (below) hosts regular exhibitions from Agnès’s 5000-piece art collection, but importantly also has a bookshop selling posters and art fanzines, as well as a dedicated T-shirt shop selling her ‘T-shirts d’artists‘ series. It’s a great way of making art tangible, wearable and accessible. I mean, what could be more accessible than a fanzine? “I like collecting fanzines. Artists make them with me, or people ask me for photographs to use in their fanzines. We’re close to this movement. And we have a library, so sometimes we put the fanzines in there.”
At her SS25 menswear presentation, T-shirts are gaffer-taped to a wall, collage-style, including collaborations with street artists and an upcoming one with Gilbert & George. Endlessly curious, Agnès regularly photographs the street art in Paris, sending the artists’ tags to her team for them to identify the artist and approach for official collaborations. There’s a charming synergy between the hand-wrought graffiti tags of street artists and Agnès B’s very own handwritten logo. The distinctive, illustrative typography is used in literally every type of communication you can imagine – from store signage, to show invitations to posters and T-shirt designs.
The presentation itself, held in her Canal Saint-Martin HQ, is low key. While you don’t get a celeb-drenched live-stream extravaganza, you do get an objets trouvés display of shells and stones collected by Agnès herself (waiting to be fashioned into handmade jewellery). And a considered wardrobe of clothes that shows she absolutely knows her customer (art and media types who love a good trouser, an interesting shirt and a well-cut arty tee or two).
My first experience with Agnès B was circa 1989, spotting one of London’s coolest club kids on a 31 bus wearing a pair of Agnès B pants as a hat (true story!). Today, her Ametora-style logo caps are popular with Japanese youth and I’ve since amassed a uniform of her gamine basics – including roomy cashmere crew necks, stripy T-shirts, boxy Brando tees in plain black or white, and signature pearl-button snap cardigans. Yes, they look better as they age. An ardent eco-activist, many Agnès B pieces are made in France and there’s a function on the new website that highlights the traceability of each garment.
While flâneuring about Paris on foot and on the Metro, enjoying the verdant squares, the lovely canal, the uber-cool new Dover Street Market and local boutiques, it’s interesting to note the quiet influence of Agnès B. It’s all there in utility-chic stores like Merci and Centre Commercial (where I pick up my copy of L’Etiquette Femme magazine) and of course A.P.C, whose Jean Touitou worked with Agnès before launching his own line. Unprecious, yet somehow ineffably elegant, I guess that’s also the formula for French Girl Style.
THANK YOU TO AGNES B FOR HOSTING THE TRIP AND SPONSORING THIS POST
WORDS: Disneyrollergirl / Navaz Batliwalla
IMAGES: To come
NOTE: Most images are digitally enhanced. Some posts use affiliate links and PR samples. Please read my privacy and cookies policy here
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