‘If you don’t exaggerate yourself you feel more beautiful’
mate portrait that brings on nostalgic pangs for a time when a French girl and her pals could set up a store in a butcher’s shop in Paris, as she did in 1975. “We cleaned the grease from the walls and the counters and hung the dresses off the meat hooks”. And then, in 1983, she opened another in New York’s Soho, where no one ventured, apart from artists and thieves.
She is perhaps one of the only people who currently sees Left-wing French presidential candidate JeanLuc Mélenchon as something of a style leader
The book is also a reminder of how through Agnès B, the label, she made her own sense of modern Parisian style accessible beyond the narrow streets of the Marais. She opened her first London store on the Fulham Road — and taught a generation of Brits the virtues of chic utilitarianism, French style. She now has two London branches in Covent Garden and Marylebone High Street. Timeless is a word she uses often and, even now, the words “Agnès B” still summon up an image of a striped T-shirt, a black boiler suit, a button-down shirt dress. It’s an understated, utilitarian style done with Parisian neatness — for all her bohemian attitude, there is nothing oversized or sloppy about the look.
In the Eighties, the sweet À Bout de Souffle-style T-shirts, the strapless dresses, the chic mini skirts and leather pants for successful architects, rather than dirty rockers, provided a fresh, youthful take on classic French that was simply not available anywhere else.
The understatement was also the antithesis at the time of the sharp shoulders and flash that the big French fashion houses such as Mugler and Saint Laurent were showcasing. “I don’t do detailed clothes,” she says, flicking through her book, which distracts her at every page — “This is beautiful, no? I love this …” she murmurs again and again. “But what I do is very simple. You can’t say where it comes from or even which time. I like simple clothes. If you don’t exaggerate yourself, you feel more beautiful.”
And it’s an aesthetic that she’s been loyal to. It doesn’t changed drastically from season to season or even year to year. “I do four collections a year, two for men, two for women, so there’s always something new. Even if I re-do a style I will change it a little. But I don’t look at the other designers, I don’t go to anyone’s shows, I don’t follow trends,” she says. “We are the designers, we should make the trends ourselves.”
She’s been heavily influenced by workers’ clothes and uniforms and she is perhaps one of the only people who currently sees Left-wing French presidential candidate JeanLuc Mélenchon as something of a style leader. “He is often wearing the workman’s jacket, blue with the round collar,” she says with some admiration. “It’s not mine, but you don’t know who designed it. When you do timeless, everyone can wear it in their own style. That’s what I like.”
This is her radical side coming through. She mentions Mélenchon more than once. She brings up the 1968 political protests with shining eyes. “Yes, I was in the streets, and my sons were eight and they were at home with other children playing students and police! It was a very joyful revolution,” she says. “I was sad when it was finished.”
She is proud that she has achieved her success despite never advertising — “for political and philosophical reasons” (although her second husband had his own very successful agency). “I think it influences people in a bad way sometimes,” she says. “In the evening on television you see all these cars and it’s too aggressive. I’m not surprised that sometimes people burn cars in the street. They will never have this car in their life and they can see that every day.”
So how does she square this with having a global fashion business? “I share,” she says, with a shrug. “As — maybe — a rich person I love to share the money I earn. I love to encourage artists. I support a lot of things, I have a foundation. So I work for a lot of people, that is the way I see it. I think rich people need to share and to pay their tax.”
She refers to her T-shirt and tuts about the other presidential candidates, François Fillon and Marine Le Pen’s, financial scandal. For the first round of the French election she has hopes for Macron, although I believe her heart belongs to Mélenchon. “He is a great man, a great speaker. But he cannot be a leader,” she says regretfully. She may have to admire his dress sense from afar.