Agnès Andrée Marguerite Troublé is a French designer born in Versailles in 1941.
She graduated from École du Louvre in Paris. At seventeen she caught the attention of Elle magazine, in a flea market, where she sold clothes with a unique and stripped style, and started working as an assistant editor for the magazine.
After two years she decided that she preferred to work with the creative side of fashion and resigned. Soon after, she started working for Dorothée Bis as a desiner, buyer and press officer. She also started to work as a freelancer.
In 1966 he founded CMC (Comptoir Mondial de Creation), parent of her future brand Agnès b.
In 1975 she opened her first store where it used to be a butcher shop. The store was decorated in a rustic way and contained an aviary that allowed birds to travel at will.
In 1981, after noticing that men were buying their women’s clothes for them to wear, she started working with men’s clothes.
Her clothes were famous for looking worn and “without style”, as she believed they should be. Agnes b. became known as a “cult” designer, who sold clothes to those who did not want to be fashionable and stylish, such as French workers. Many of her clothes, at the beginning of her career, were inspired by those workers, even borrowing the fabrics from which their uniforms were traditionally made. She used such recut and redyed uniforms, adding to the collections black leather blazers and striped t-shirts in fabrics used to make rugby uniforms. As a result she ended up creating timeless clothes with simplicity of cuts and style.
Not interested in dressing the elite, Agnès b. thinks that clothes should not hide or speak louder than who wears them. Inspired by ordinary people, her clothes are relaxed, usually maintain the natural wrinkles of natural fabrics and come in basic colors, such as black. She also uses simple modeling and generally manage to translate the hippie ethos in an elegant and chic way, combining common sense with talent.
Another difference is that she usually shows two collections per year, but continues to add new pieces to the collections throughout the year. She also keeps some basic pieces always available, as she believes that the customer wants some stability.
Her stores also ended up famous by themselves, all decorated in more or less the same way, cleanly without much decoration with the exception of film-noir posters, which she liked a lot. Their windows also have a peculiar way, they do not use mannequins and have clothes hanging from hangers and accessories strategically spread over them.
In 1999, after being attracted by one of its showcases and having been enchanted by the interior and content of the store, filmmaker Harmony Korine closed an artistic collaboration with the designer.
Agnès b. interest for other art forms didn’t begin there. In 1984 she opened a library / art gallery in Paris called “Galerie du Jour”, which exposed artists such as several famous graffiti artists, among them are: A-one, Futura 2000, Henry “Banger” Benvenuti, Sharp, Bazooka, Bad BC, Echo et Mode2, BBC (Bad Boys Crew), Ash, Skki et Jayonedont, Les Tétines Noires, les Frères Ripoulin. The gallery that also functions as a library has a branch in Japan.
At the same time, she also created the periodic magazine “Point d’ironie”.
After venturing into cinema, Agnès got involved with other cinematographic projects, and ended up directing two documentaries. Her involvement with cinema resulted in the creation of the film producion agency “Love streams productions agnès b.”
Finally, in addition to being a great artist, Agnès was also known for being a good entrepreneur, dealing with the other side of her brand herself. Instead of selling it to a market conglomerate, she preferred to remain alone, since she believed that if she sold her brand, the style of her clothes would soon disappear.
Today she has stores around the world, and her brand sells clothes for children, men, women, as well as accessories and a line of perfumes.
An interesting detail about her is that, in 1985, she became a knight for the National Order of Merit (French) and became an officer in 1997; the French Legion of Honor also made her a knight in 2000.
Agnès b.´s Women’s Spring / Summer 2020 colection:
Women’s Fall / Winter 2013:
Men’s Spring / Summer 2015:
Check out:
The Post’s Pinterest Board: https://br.pinterest.com/fashionsummedup/a/agnès-b/
The Post’s Brazilian Portuguese version: https://amodaresumida.com/agnes-b/
Bibliography: Callan, Georgina O’Hara; Enciclopédia da moda de 1840 à década de 90 / Georgina O’Hara Callan ; verbetes brasileiros Cynthia Garcia : tradução Glória Maria de Mello Carvalho, Maria Ignez França – São Paulo : Companhia das Letras, 2007.
https://amodaresumida.wordpress.com/2016/10/06/agnes-b/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnès_b.
http://www.fashionencyclopedia.com/A-Az/Agn-s-B.html