Designer Agnès b. Is the Latest Fashion Tycoon to Open a Private Museum in Paris. But She Still Wants to Keep Her Distance From the Art World

In a black jumpsuit, her hair
roughly pinned up with delicate white flowers made of
fabric, Agnès Troublé—the
French designer, art collector, film patron, and philanthropist
better known as Agnès b.—took a deep breath of satisfaction. A
glass of champagne in hand, she looked around her new art space, La
Fab, as it opened its doors to the public last weekend in
Paris.

“Not bad! Now that I see it, I’m
happy,” says the fashion icon, who dressed stars like David Bowie
for years and invented the famous “snap cardigan” as part of her
eponymous clothing line, which has come to epitomize effortless
Parisian chic.

But despite her cult status and
the international success of her brand, Agnès, as she is called by
her loyal following, has never felt bound to the fashion world’s
elitist bubble (she doesn’t like going to other fashion shows). The
same is true of her attitude toward the art world.

As private art foundations and
museums designed by starchitects continue to pop up in
France—this spring, the Pinault Collection museum
opens in the center of Paris, and LUMA, Arles’s contemporary art
center, continues its gradual opening in the south of France in a
crystal-like tower by Frank Gehry—Agnès
has taken a decidedly different tack.

Her new art space sprawls across
the first two floors of a multi-use building that also hosts a
daycare and 75 apartments designated for low-income families and
disabled people. “I didn’t
want to be in a rich area; I love the more working-class side
because I like to be a frontier-er,” she explains in slightly broken English,
referencing the French word for border. “To be part of it, but
still staying outside.”

The complex, which was built in
2017, is in a neighborhood known for its modernist and experimental
architecture on the eastern side of the city in the
13th arrondissement, not far from the Seine’s
industrial ports. With a rippling façade broken up by pops of
square block terraces, La Fab is, miraculously, located on a square
called Place Jean-Michel Basquiat, named after the artist who is
both central to Agnès’s collection and an old friend. It’s little
wonder that Agnès didn’t hesitate when she first laid eyes on the
venue.

The 1,400-square-meter (or
15,000-square-foot) columned gallery space will showcase
exhibitions every three to four months that present rotating
selections of the designer’s collection of more than 5,000 works by
artists including Warhol, Man Ray, Nan Goldin, Gilbert & George,
and Keith Haring. Many of the pieces on view are by established
names who started out as friends of the designer, punctuated by the
work of emerging and younger figures such as Parisian artist
Thibaut Bouedjoro or French-born, LA-based painter Claire
Tabouret.

“I made the collection by
acquiring pieces by young, unknown artists—I never
bought a Jeff Koons for $3 million,” Agnès says. “When I bought the
Basquiat drawing,” she adds, gesturing to a self-portrait in the
inaugural exhibition, “it wasn’t expensive at all; I got it from
his studio at the time, because of one piece I had seen in Paris.
That’s why I wanted to know more about him, and we met
later.” 

Though officials declined to
disclose the exact cost of La Fab, the venue’s manager Sébastien
Ruiz says the price tag was “very reasonable for the amount of
space involved.” Originally designed to be used as a retail space,
its large storefront windows had to be covered using shades to
protect the artworks from sun damage. The 13th arrondissement’s
mayor Jérôme Coumet expressed relief that the space had been turned
into an arts institution and not an outlet for a ready-to-wear
chain, as the developers had originally planned. “Until just a few
years ago, our district had a lot of artists but very few cultural
spaces,” Coumet notes.

In addition to showcasing her
private collection, La Fab also houses many other projects the
designer has spearheaded over the decades. Navigating among her interests in fashion,
design, art, and social activism seems to fuel her seemingly
endless creative drive. In addition to the exhibition space,
La Fab hosts Agnès’s
commercial gallery, the galerie du jour, which she founded in 1983
(“everything is for sale,” she notes—including the furniture).
There’s also a bookstore, as well as offices for her philanthropic
arm, which she takes pains to clarify receives no public financial
support.

“It’s not a foundation that
takes money from the state and creates tax deductions,” she says.
“I think rich people need to pay their taxes normally because, if
they did, the world would be better. Too few people keep all the
money in the world; it’s unfair. That’s why I like to share.” Here,
she is referring to La Fab’s upstairs residents: the building’s
tenants have a permanent free pass to La Fab and its planned film
screenings and conferences to be held in cultural venues nearby.
Other visitors pay somewhere between €3 and €7 ($3.30 to $8).

For her first exhibition, which
the fashion designer put together herself—her
childhood dream was to be a museum curator—Agnès
chose the theme “La Hardiesse,” the French word for boldness.
Walking through this first exhibition, which boasts a healthy dose
of street art alongside blue-chip names like Basquiat and Gilbert &
George, she stops frequently with her nose a few inches from an
artwork and discusses it as though it were a living creature she
has cared for. “All this was
in my mind, but to see it on the wall and the pieces combined
together, telling something—it’s like writing a story with others’
works of art,” she says. “It’s great for me.”

Does the word “boldness”
describe her? “I don’t know,” she says. “It must. I like the idea
of doubt in that word. It’s about not being sure and trying to do
something, even if you are not sure,” she said. “Doubting a little
means you have to think.”

La Fab is located at Place
Jean-Michel Basquiat, 75013 in Paris.

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Open a Private Museum in Paris. But She Still Wants to Keep Her
Distance From the Art World appeared first on artnet
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