Agnes B.

Agnes B. (b.1941) is a French sportswear designer who began her career in the early 1970s as junior editor of Elle magazine and later as assistant to Dorothy Bis. In the mid 1970s she opened her own boutique in Paris where she remade French worker’s uniforms, black leather blazers and rugby fabric T-shirts. Her goal was to sell to those who did not want to look too “fashionable.” Her clothing, encompassing those for men, women and children, has a timeless quality being simple and relaxed in design.

Her clothes are made for the “real” person, not just the fashion conscious or the elite, and her separates mix well with one’s own vintage or modern clothing. Rather than risk her non-design type clothing be obscured or overlooked in a large department store environment, she went on to open more of her own boutiques worldwide, including her first American store in New York in 1980.

A shrewd businesswoman, she has stated, “I have no desire to dress an elite. It’s all a game. I work as if I were still in my grandmother’s attic, dressing up. Clothes aren’t everything. When they become too important, when they hide the person wearing them, then I don’t like them. Clothes should make you feel happy, relaxed, and ready to tackle other problems.”

Written by vintageclothesline

from an early 1990s skirt

Courtesy of fuzzylizzie.com

from a pair of 1990s men’s trousers

Courtesy of Ranch Queen Vintage

from a mid 2000s skirt

Courtesy of pinky-a-gogo