For its men’s summer 2018 collection, Agnès B offers a sober wardrobe that perfectly illustrates casual chic; a somewhat quaint Anglicism that has become customary when we speak of Agnès B. We’d need the words of Pagnol or Colette to speak of the designer’s clothes, ready-to-be inhabited garments. Imbued with family outings and memories of moments shared with artists and anonymous people who inspired Agnès B: a soft line with close-ups of the artist’s life, or rockier nights. A breath of fresh air at a time when the avant-garde, the diktat of the total look and eccentricity are the watchwords of the catwalks. Fashion that’s hard to wear, out of touch with reality, and seems disconnected from people, except for a small portion of the hyper-connected. A free spirit: Agnès doesn’t look at the trends around her, but remains involved in film, music and all the forms that art takes.
Agnès B.: Dignity
Agnès B.: editing techniques and effects
A cross-fade around the artist’s theme. Superimposed images in which landscapes replace one another. “The painter’s wardrobe”, “French elegance” and “nightlife”: seamless sequences. Cotton pants and printed shirts take us from French gardens to pebble beaches. A participatory film: modular fashion, where clothes blossom in the designer’s off-fields, to become the future memories of others. From the Cowboys and sailors of a not-so-light-hearted youth, to the too-short, illicit nights before getting dressed up with the family: it’s a piece of her life that Agnès slips in without a word. A sort of Colette of clothing.
While she has already collaborated with Tarantino and Lynch, it’s only natural that her gallery (La galerie du jour) should be the venue for the screening of Trash Humpers, to coincide with the Harmony Korine retrospective at the Centre Pompidou. (which she hosted in her gallery in 2000 and 2003).
Picasso in poplin boxer shorts
Picasso: the first artist to fully embrace celebrity, to play the game of posing with photographers. He reveals his intimacy, and makes his art the synthesis between his lives. Agnès met him for the first time at the age of 16, and rediscovered him through the pages of a book by André Villers. A gentleman in poplin boxer shorts and a large shirt: images that break with the myth of the elusive artist, crushed behind his work, dying alone in his attic in complete oblivion. Picasso liked to play with the trumpets of fame: he loved glory, art, money, life and women. Live life to the full: that’s the promise of this line of work shirts, straight cotton pants and casual sailboats.
OPINION
A collection that makes you think about current trends: has fashion become importable?
In an interview with Le Monde in 2016, Agnès B. confided: “I love people and clothes. And I’ve always wanted to make long-lasting, non-fashionable clothes that please people and can be kept for twenty years. I’m looking for comfort, harmony, things that go together easily and allow you to compose a myriad of outfits.” (Full article)
Before the era of distinctive eccentricity, made up of outsized volume, floral prints and total black looks, there was the air of haute-couture finery. Fashion was a matter of class, of social class, where differentiating oneself “from the people” was paramount. This left its mark on French history, which took a long time to accept the arrival of ready-to-wear in the 1960s.
Sociologist Frédéric Godart notes that it was under the impetus of Yves Saint Laurent and “a conjecture in which fashion production costs were falling and people’s standard of living was rising” that ready-to-wear became democratized. If not from the top, then from the bottom: this is Demna Gveselia’s credo, since she was inspired by the fashion of thrift shops and the street. Derived, hypertrophied: complicated fashion, because it’s not about the clothes, it’s about the context. An anti-fashion manifesto, most recently demonstrated by an all-digital show for VETEMENTS. A new form of Ellistism that intellectualizes fashion: nothing wrong with that in itself. But sometimes difficult to appropriate. Every era has its designers with importable pieces, closer to art than to bodies: Azzedine Alaïa and his sculptural dresses… Eccentric pieces whose future can be questioned when they are displayed on fast-fashion racks.
Fashion has to be present. According to Olivier Rousteing, “What the press finds chic bores people in the street, while what they consider vulgar, the public may find cool.(…)But social networks have opened up the frontiers. The street is gaining ground, magazines are becoming archaic, the new connected generations are now defining what taste is.” Full interview
A Millennial generation spreading its own fashion. The limit of this euphoria: fashion aimed at a specific generation. When fast-fashion reappropriates fur mules on a massive scale, we wonder if it’s for “everyone”. Youth dictates the law? or rather an ultra-connected young elite living in the big capitals ?
H&M, Zara: you need a minimum number of residents to welcome these brands.
The catch is to understand whether this “democratic” avant-garde finds its audience, or becomes a new means of differentiation. A bias that reinforces the stereotype that fashion is too eccentric, something unimportant…
Quintessential elegance: a right for all at Agnès B
“And I don’t care what other designers do. My job is not to follow the trends of the moment, but to create them. I design everything I sign myself.”
Linen, cotton, prints and a color palette where the sun gradually meets the sea. Free-flowing looks: democracy of figuration.
It’s up to each individual to decorate the rooms.
Marry a linen suit with a college boy jacket.
Associating the casualness of American youth culture of the 1960s with the chic of a post-war leisure class. As if James Dean had come to Combray for his vacations.
Fashion that’s ready to be worn, torn and stained: fashion that can be experienced without waiting.
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