I wouldn’t say I have a personal style signifier, though I often wear two rings that I love. One is a gold ring I made myself; it’s moulded on a piece of aluminium that I crumpled around my finger. The second is a little diamond ring that I found on the street in Paris, not far from the Silencio on rue Montmartre. I also love wearing badges. I have old ones from the Vietnam war, “Peace now”, things like that. They are a way to tell people what you stand for.
The last things I bought and loved were two pieces by Max Coulon, a young sculptor from the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. One is a bird and the other is a sort of half-human, half-animal character with no neck and its arms spread out. Max pours concrete into children’s clothing to create the bodies of these small figures. He’s very talented. I like to buy pieces by young artists because it’s an encouragement for them at the same time as being a gift for me.
The place that means a lot to me is La Baie de la Garoupe in Cap d’Antibes. I went with my father when I was three and a half years old and he took me out on his little boat, put me in the water and said, “I know you can swim” – and I swam. That was also the bay Picasso visited in the ’50s. One day I caught him in the stairway, and he told me I was beautiful and gave me a kiss. So I went home singing “Picasso gave me a kiss, il m’a embrassé, Picasso.” I was 17. He was the first artist who gave me a kiss. The second was Jean-Michel Basquiat.
The best souvenirs I’ve brought home are little objects – stones, shells, leaves – that I pick up. Every time I go away I find something. Some of my favourites are escargot shells from Brittany that are a very beautiful cream colour, and oysters, which become very white and expressive when they have been rolled in the sea for a long time. Constance Maure, our very talented jeweller, assembles them and turns them into jewels for Agnès b. The girls in Japan go crazy for them.
The reason I called my brand “Agnès b.” is that I was divorced from Christian Bourgois, so I said, “OK, just put a ‘b dot’ – like how they write names in news stories.” I thought it was OK like that. And the logo is my handwriting, which has been the same since I was 12. My mother always found it funny to have my writing on the back of her shirts.
The best book I’ve read in the past year is The Châtelet Apprentice by Jean-François Parot. It’s set in 18th-century Paris and it’s about a young policeman who has to unravel a murder mystery. I love the 18th century. I was raised in Versailles, in a house about 150m from the Château, and prefer the style of Louis XV buildings and 18th-century art. Women then had beautiful silhouettes with a small bust and a big skirt.
I don’t do Spotify but I like music very much and listen to all kinds, from classical and rock to French rap. I recently discovered the musician Chevalier de Saint-Georges because I read a great book about him by Alain Guédé. He was the son of an enslaved mother and a Guadeloupe plantation owner and he was very successful in the court of Versailles. We have our own web radio in our stores. Yann Le Marec is our music curator and he always finds new things. It’s very successful because there is no advertising, only music. Sometimes he samples one or two sentences from my interviews.
My style icons are men such as Marcello Mastroianni or Jean-Paul Belmondo. I like the fact that you can recognise someone by a few pieces of clothing, such as Belmondo’s jacket, tie and little chapeau in À Bout de Souffle, or Brigitte Bardot’s beautiful yellow robe in Le Mépris. At that time I was going to the cinema a lot and we were demonstrating against the Algerian war. I grew up in a conservative family so discovering [Jean-Luc] Godard was a great way to see the world differently.
The best gifts I’ve received have been flowers. I love having flowers. My favourites are tuberoses. Paul [Lasfargues], my fit model for the men’s collections, recently gave me a beautiful bouquet of daisies and baby’s breath. He is very inspiring for me. I did a portrait of him after Titian’s Man with a Glove, which I saw at the Musée du Louvre when I was about 12. I loved it because his gaze looks away and I was raised with all these portraits in Versailles that looked you in the eye. The photograph I took of Paul is now in the Centre Pompidou-Metz.
I love artists. Whenever I’m in London I see Gilbert & George and have dinner with them. Jay Jopling is a great friend too. I admire them very much. All my friends are artists; I don’t have any friends who are bankers.
I have a collection of art – around 6,000 pieces – that I’ve collected for the past 30 years. I have some pieces at home, but most are in a special storage unit, and sometimes I lend them to museums. I have some Polaroids from Warhol, and beautiful pieces by Alexander Calder and Basquiat too. I bought his self-portrait from 1983. He was not known at all at that time. I met him at an exhibition in Paris [at Yvon Lambert] and we ended up talking for hours in a pizzeria across from the gallery instead of going to a dinner with [Jean-Charles de] Castelbajac. He was very cultured because his father made him learn about the Greeks and Latin. I loved him.
In my fridge you’ll always find butter with pieces of Guérande salt inside, fresh milk and Żubrówka, a Polish vodka with a blade of grass inside. I like a little shot before dinner. That’s enough for me.
The best way to spend €20 is to give it to someone in the street who needs to eat. There are so many people who don’t eat enough. I try to do my best to help. I’ve been raised to share. I think rich people have to share. Not paying people, not paying taxes and paying lawyers to not pay taxes is immoral to me. I work 65 per cent for the state. Perhaps that’s why they gave me a lot of medals.
The thing I couldn’t do without is my pen. It’s a Tradio Pulaman TRJ50 pen by Pentel in collaboration with Agnès b, so it has a small “b” on it. It’s refillable and it’s a great pen. I design everything with it. Pentel Tradio for Agnès b pen, €5
An indulgence I would never forgo is a good baguette with butter in the morning. Voilà!
An object I would never part with is an old piece of white chiffon I sleep with at night. It’s the only thing I have to take when I travel. I’ve had it since I was very small; it’s full of holes. But I can’t sleep without it.
I never set out to work in fashion. I hated sewing. My older sister used to sew with my mother but I preferred drawing. I went to the École des Beaux-Arts in Versailles after school for nine hours a week, and I still love to draw people. I always say I don’t do fashion; I do clothes. I was working as a stylist when I opened my first store in 1976, selling workman-style clothes. It was successful very quickly. At that time, there was Sonia Rykiel and Emmanuelle Khanh, and the press saw something different in my boutique. I always say the press made me. I never advertised. I don’t pay attention to fashion. I’ve never been to Sonia Rykiel. I prefer to people-watch on Place de la République – there’s always such a diverse mix of people.
I’m currently preparing the Humanité exhibition [until 22 March] at La Fab, my gallery on Place Jean-Michel Basquiat. It will feature precious pieces from Warhol and Harmony Korine, and African artists such as Malick Sidibé. I love to hang everything – to put the things together in a way people will understand. It’s a big job but I enjoy it very much.
The beauty staples I’m never without are Fracas by Robert Piguet, which I’ve been wearing for the past 40 years. I love the smell of the tuberose. And I’ve always taken care of my skin. I can’t go to bed without washing my face and putting on cream. I like La Prairie’s Caviar Cream. It’s expensive but it lasts a long time. You don’t have to put on a lot. I don’t like heavy creams. I also try to do a facial at the spa in the Waldorf Astoria Versailles every two months. Robert Piguet Fracas, £185 for 100ml EDP. La Prairie Skin Caviar Luxe Cream moisturiser, £500 for 50ml, harrods.com
The item I would save from a fire is the encyclopédie Diderot et d’Alembert, an enormous, extraordinary book with beautiful engravings inside. It’s been in my family since the 18th century and it’s a treasure. I would save that before any piece of clothing. And I would have my favourite leather jacket on me anyway.
The one artist whose work I would collect if I could is [Jean-Antoine] Watteau. The small, closely spaced buttons on the jacket in his painting Pierrot, which is in the Louvre, were partly what inspired my Snap cardigan [Agnès b’s signature design with buttons from 1979]. But I’m very happy with all the artists I’ve discovered – for example, Claire Tabouret, who is making the stained-glass windows for Notre-Dame, and Max Coulon. I like to discover young artists.
I don’t have a wellbeing guru. I don’t do yoga. I see all the women going to yoga with their carpet and I’ve never wanted to go. But I love to swim. I go to the pool in the Trianon Palace in Versailles throughout the year. It’s very good for me.
I don’t have much time for podcasts. I’m always active. Michel de Montaigne, a great French writer from the 16th century, said “L’action me repose” – “activity relaxes me”. And that’s really like me, I think. I always find something to do. Plus, I have a big family – 17 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. I’m never bored.
Do I believe in life after death? I’m not sure. I hope to see my father again. I believe in a soul and that the soul lives on.
I love a hotel. I love the Hong Kong Peninsula hotel with its bathroom that looks over the port and all the city lights. I don’t travel much because I work a lot and I still design everything, but when you have a big family being in a hotel is fantastic.
My favourite building is the Académie Française in Paris because it has two wings that look like big open arms and a footbridge in front of it that connects it to the Louvre. It looks as if the building is opening its arms to people and to culture.
In another life, I would have been a farmer. I was raised on a farm for a short time and I loved it. The end of the war was terrifying in Versailles, so my mother sent me to a farm in Normandy for a few months and I was very happy. I was three and a half. They had pigs and cows and hens and rabbits and rivers. It was magic.
When I need to feel inspired, I go to my table and work. I never struggle with inspiration. I feel like my customers understand [my designs] and they like them, so I don’t have to change anything. I work at a large oval desk on the sixth floor of Agnès b’s office on rue Dieu, and I work every day. I still design and draw everything. At some point it will change but for now it’s like that.
The best piece of advice I ever received was to be yourself. Nobody said that to me when I was small. But it’s the best. Don’t bother [trying to be] others.