Agnès B.: The store that we do not wear

Paris is a place for the courses: the science fiction fiction for Cardin and Corrings, the skirts of Jean -Paul Golter, and the enlarged Gothic rituals of Rick Owens. All wild, unforgettable and worthy of antiques. But the AGNès Explorer that we are not wearing today may be more than any violent iconoclast.

When I presented AGNès b. In 1975 (The B dedicated to Bourgois, the married title for Mrs. Toblé), many women, including the designer’s mother, still enjoyed their clothes. It was not always faded, but it was still high -end. Eve Saint-à-Porter presented in 1966, but it was Mrs. Toublé who transferred the needle in the next decade, where she made an elegant worship clothes, of the bonn, easy to wear and outside.

“I always wanted to create every man, a woman and a child,” said the lady, who was corresponding to a video call from her studio in Paris. “My philosophy comes from what happened in the streets of Paris in 1968. I still desigate everything myself.”

When Agnès b. It started, 50 years ago, it was completely new, cold and Parisian. Inspired by MS. Discoveries Toblé’s Flea Market, compatible with the art and cinema world in the 1960s and sold at a more accessible price from Rive Gauche from Saint Laurent. The place where I went to the top of a striped shirt, a white shirt or black trousers, and created a model for dozens of medium -term French fashion brands.

Without the lady, among them, there is likely that there is any APC, Comptoir Des Cotonniers, maje, Sandro or Sézane. Fifty years after its founding, its work is owned by the family, with 242 stores worldwide. She sold more than two million jackets of Stardan, and opened its contemporary art exhibition, La Fab, in Paris in 2022, offered pieces of her personal collection, which includes more than 5,000 works.

The designer Jean-Carles de Castelbajk worked with Mrs. Toblé in 1971 as a designer at the Pierre d’alby brand, before they presented their own brands. They remain close friends.

“It was a godmother in fashion,” said Mr. De Castilbagak. “I remember when I opened its first store on Du Jur Street. The area was completely underground, like Soho before it became modern. Ageès had a very good education and came from Versailles, but it was curious about politics, and she was concerned about society and Catholicism.”

“She was full of duets and wanted her store to be a cabinet of curiosity,” continued. “She was putting pictures of Godard’s films on the wall and inviting her performance artists. She invented functional clothes with a touch of rock and roll. The sudden Kardan is her statement.”

Jean -Towito, who founded APC in 1987, was working in AGNès B. When the lady designed the first Cardjan correspondence in 1979. “I was playing the electricity of her studio over the store one night,” said Mr. Towito. “I remember seeing her from dinner, putting a round black shirt on the neck on an office, grabbing a pair of scissors and cutting the piece below the center. Then I took Snap buttons and put it on the front. It became a global success.”

He said, “I learned great lessons that night.” “Follow your instincts and do things yourself, literally with your own hands. What you also learned from working with it is the virtue of using a small and smart group of people to run a company.”

For many Parisian youth, Agnès b. It became an experience as well as a capsule wardrobe. “We are used to love the giant installation room in its boutique on Pierre Charron Street,” wrote Barbara Bocara and Sharon Carif, who founded the BA & Sh brand in 2003. “We will all change together. It was a unique way to shop with friends or family.”

Then there are the design classics that people have kept for years and repeatedly purchased. “Her heritage is real,” said Pierre Mahyu, the founder of Officine Générale. “I always amazed my friends, and myself, wearing planned tendencies and cut products. It was part of the daily adultery 30 years ago, and I am very happy that I still see them today in a smaller generation. I am not sure that anyone else in France has managed to master a long time.”

Clothes in Agnès B. He was always conservative, but he was also an empty fabric for the lady to explore and fix errors to drop ideas on them. The artist’s group of shirts was presented in 1994 with a simple logo by Felix Gonzalez Torres who read, “No one has you.” This work was followed by Kenneth Angger, Louis Burgua, David Lynch and Agnes Varda. A recent edition of Harmouni Corin Tutch, which was produced to coincide with his exhibition in La Fab.

Unofficial French fashion marriage and contemporary art is a thing from the official of Mrs. Washwalf. In recent years, we have seen the cooperation of the Hip Paris études Studio with the kitchen, and the center of Manhattan Arts, which opened in 1971, and published a series of its artist’s studies.

“Agnès is a true inspiration for us,” said Aurélien Arbet, co -founder and creative director of études studio. “I opened a road that there was no other fashion house, cooperating with artists on the walls, running an exhibition and support for cinema and art with its magazine, Le Point D’Aronie.”

While many stickers buy to the art world through the brand – see Dior’s recent sponsorship of Judy Chicago’s performances – the lady has a personal relationship with the artists you support. The current Corin exhibition includes works from its own collection, which is the largest by the artist in private hands. When it opened its first store in New York in 1980, it was on Prince Street Street in Soho before the update, when Donald Jude was still living around the corner.

“I had an instinct,” said Mrs. Correspondent. It was the place where Andy Warhol and all the artists were. This is how I met Basikiyat. Andy bought a white shirt from the store, and then when Jean -Michel was an offer in Paris, he came to my shop there. I received a call from him at Crillon at four in the morning, and I asked me to go, but I said … no. “

The inner circle of Mrs. David Boy, John Giorno and Jonas Mecas, and her history included in the center of New York City as much as it is with Paris. “Soon after we opened the Soho store, I received a call from the manager saying that there is a girl who really wants a small pork pie hat, without paying,” said Mrs. Correspondent. “I asked who was. Madonna was. We allowed her to obtain it.”

On the day she spoke to Mrs. Tarcar, she was wearing the latest version of Cardigan Snap. She looked at the seventies of the last century – the same as the blond, smiling, comfortable, and open curls. She was around her neck, a scarf printed in one of her pictures of the art of writing on the wall in Paris.

She said, “I always look at the walls in cities.” “The walls can speak. I love the art of writing on the walls. I have three beautiful pieces of Basquayat, but he called himself a street poet, not the street artist.”

Behind the lady is a correspondence, it was a mood painting with pictures of Koreama Korea in a scene from “Battle Royale” and Jean Sebert at a striped top in “Treeples”. “I met her long ago,” said Mrs. Correspondent. “I was a good friend of her and her husband, Roman Gary. What it is today will be without a monochrome edge for new French waves.

Xavier Romatet, Dean of the Institute, Français de La Mode, France Fashion School, wrote, via e -mail, “The poster has a special place for a French style”. I collected simple and durable clothes with a strong brand identity. It was simply the signature of her first name on the poster, a great idea that inspired rapprochement and trust, and created a society of elegance and thought. “

“It could have been reached, long before the collapse of fast fashion,” added Mr. Roomette.

When the lady asked to explore and fix errors about what she thought her heritage would be, she assured me that she would remain independent and in the hands of her family. She never thought of selling. And why is it? The store was never exhausted, because it was never “.”