Fab at 78: Agnes b. opening Paris gallery to show her art – think Andy Warhol and Basquiat – and add some zest to a soulless corner of French capital
- Agnes b. avoids the fashion industry, but is passionate about art, the poor and dispossessed, and the environment
- The great-grandmother is opening Fab, a gallery in Paris that will display her 5,000 artworks and serve as a creative hub
French designer Agnes b. really doesn’t like the fashion world of which she is one of the great survivors.
“I don’t like fashion. I have nothing to do with that world where everyone is in a bubble,” says the veteran creator, a lifelong activist for progressive causes.
“Some people like to go out and be seen,” says the 78-year-old, who dressed her friend David Bowie for decades and who made the famous black jacket with the leather collar that John Travolta wore in the film Pulp Fiction.
Like her, Bowie would run a mile from the “celebrity scene”, she said. Both, however, shared a passion for all kinds of modern art. And now Agnes b. – whose real name is Agnes Troublé – is opening her own gallery in an up-and-coming corner of the French capital.
Fab will not only house her eclectic private collection of more than 5,000 works – half of them photographs – but will also, she promised, be a “factory of culture and social solidarity”.