Agnès B (née Agnès Troublé) was born and raised in Versailles. At 17 she married Christian Bourgois, had twins two years later and divorced soon afterwards (but retained the B of his surname). After a couple of years at Elle magazine, she moved into fashion design and opened her first boutique in a former butcher’s shop in Paris in 1975. Now she has outposts in Asia, the Middle East, the US and around Europe. She has dressed musicians including David Bowie and her clothes have appeared in films such as Pulp Fiction (1994). In 2013 she directed the feature film My Name Is Hmmm. Her new book, agnès b: STYLISTE (Abrams, £30), which looks back over her four decades in fashion, is out on 7 March.
1 | Architecture / Art
Pompidou Centre, Paris
Bo Bo [as Parisians call the Pompidou Centre] celebrates its 40th anniversary this year but it still feels very modern and an important part of the city’s cultural life. I’ve been going there since it opened. My first shop was close by, on Rue du Jour. They have beautiful libraries and of course the Museum of Modern Art, where they show a lot of work by young people. I love to go there in the evenings after I finish work at 8pm or 9pm and climb the mechanical stairway outside – you see Paris appearing more and more as you go up. I like this place very much.
2 | Music
Makeba by Jain
Jain is a young French musician I really like – her song Makeba won best video at the Victoires de la Musique earlier this month. She’s young, beautiful and very talented. It’s pop music but inventive, with an African influence, because she was raised partly in the Congo. Music is really important to me and I’ve worked with a lot of extraordinary artists. I dressed David Bowie for 25 years. He was wearing my khaki T-shirt with a black star in the middle and people were wondering if that’s why he called his beautiful last album Blackstar.
3 | Book
Louis XIV: L’Envers du Soleil by Michel de Gréce
I don’t get a lot of time to read, aside from on vacation, but I continue to learn about Versailles. I’m very interested in 17th- and 18th-century history and I’ve been reading about Versailles since I was 12, because I was raised there and wanted to know everything about it. It’s so fascinating – the palace is like a skyscraper but long – and so many things happened there. Louis XIV was very modern and surrounded himself with great artists, so I’m interested to read this book by Michel de Gréce, which I picked up secondhand for €2. In terms of clothes and art and the way of living, I think the 18th century was the most refined time we’ve had in France.
4 | Film
American Honey (2016)
American Honey is a very good film by Andrea Arnold about young people who go around America selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door. The characters have a lot of faults but they’re funny and engaging and free, which is inspiring because it doesn’t feel like there’s very much freedom in the world right now. I’m also looking forward to seeing the new documentary about David Lynch, The Art Life, when it comes out in Paris. It looks back over his life and particularly his career as a painter, which people don’t know so much about. I love David Lynch.
5 | Restaurant
La Cantina, Paris
This is a delicious Italian restaurant where we go if we feel like having really great family food. Mimmo is the owner, who also makes the food – he’s an excellent cook. We know him because he used to have a restaurant near our office. Then he moved a couple of years ago to Avenue de Ségur near Les Invalides, but we still go to eat there. He tells you what you’re going to have and everything – the pizza bread, the pasta, the risotto – is completely homemade and delicious. I always have lunch at my desk in the office but I’ll go to La Cantina in the evening for dinner.
6 | Newspaper
Le Monde
Right now I’m so worried about politics. I can’t sleep when I think of Trump, and in France the situation is so complicated. I’ve always been leftwing but now who should we vote for to stop Marine Le Pen? I get a lot of my news from Le Monde, which I’ve been reading since I was 17. It gets delivered to my office around 3pm and I always wait for it. It’s a good newspaper, though I think they’ve been unfair to Hollande, who is someone I like very much. I know him and I dress him too and I think he has been tortured for bad reasons. We’re going to miss him. Happily he was there during the terrorist attacks. Imagine Sarkozy or someone like that, it would have been awful.
7 | Hotel
Chez Talout, Morocco
Morocco is my second home, I feel like a fish in the sea there. It’s a big country, very diverse, and I’ve travelled to many different regions. When I go there, I like to stay in people’s houses and small hotels. I would recommend a special hotel called Chez Talout. It’s in the south near Ouarzazate, not far from the desert and the Valley of Roses, and it’s beautiful. When you get up in the morning to have breakfast, you can see the Atlas mountains covered in snow, and also the palm trees that are watered by the snowmelt. It’s a cheap hotel but really a great place.
