PARIS — “I make clothes that you dress in, not to show off with.”

For Agnès Troublé, the founder of French family-owned brand Agnès b., stylish clothes for everyday life have been the endgame for the past 50 years and that’s what she’ll be putting on the runway on Monday.

Never mind that her designs have landed on a host of boldface names that includes Madonna, David Bowie, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Patti Smith over the decades — she’s even prouder of seeing her label on the streets, worn on young and old, men and women, the well-to-do and scrappy types alike.

For this self-professed owner of “an elephant’s memory,” it’s always been about what comes next.

Under the Gothic arches of the Collège des Bernardins, it will be “a show that’s 50 years of style plus the spring 2026 collection — because I always look forward to the future,” she told WWD in an interview in her sun-drenched office atop the company’s Rue Dieu headquarters.

In five decades, much has changed.

“We saw luxury install itself strongly,” she noted. “But these days, what’s the point of having a purse that costs a month of a good salary? I don’t understand. I don’t even understand the principle of luxury to that point.”

What hasn’t changed is Troublé’s staunch belief in giving clients fair value for money. “We make in France as much as we can, I keep margins as tight as possible — I’m not very generous on those — but I want clients to be satisfied,” she said.

But don’t expect a nostalgia-filled retrospective on the runway, although silhouettes will be identified by date and drawn from some 2,000 archive pieces.

“I love remembering moments, I have a very precise recollection of everything but no nostalgia,” she said. “I have a very optimistic nature and I always look ahead — it would drive my mother crazy, my father and I were the same, always seeing the bright side of things. It’s my nature and I’m a Sagittarius, so I love moving forward too.”

That’s how she got her start in fashion in the late 1960s.

Then aged 20 and a mother to twin boys whose first marriage to publisher Christian Bourgois — the B in Agnès b. — had recently ended, caught the eye of an editor at French Elle thanks to her stylish attire and was hired as a fashion editor there.

Fast-forward two years and she jumped to the brand side, working for a number of French labels such as Dorothée Bis and Cacharel. Having started to sign her work “Agnès b.,” she registered the name in 1973.

The watershed moment came in 1975.  

“Everything started in what is now our men’s boutique, opposite the Saint-Eustache church, at 3 Rue du Jour,” recalled Troublé. A former butcher shop that had a lamb — her childhood nickname — on its storefront, it became the first Agnès b. address.

It also became a concept store before the term was invented.

Selling the clothing she designed in her studio upstairs, it was also filled with movie posters, had graffiti and black marker notes on the butcher-style white tiles and there were Bob Marley and Roxy Music records playing. A pair of finches became a whole flock of birds zipping around the store.

“It was clothing for life, the way I dress, and the way I dress my kids — I have five,” she said of her style, then and to this day.

“Press and clients made me,” she said. “Press immediately noticed there was something different in this boutique, in my creations because I’ve always wanted to do clothes,” she said.

Clients couldn’t get enough of her tiered skirts, she said, recalling how they’d be snapped up fresh from the atelier. As a result, she’s never had to spend a cent in advertising, something she hates on principle.

Another item that firmly ensconced her in the wardrobe of her clients was the snap cardigan, invented by slashing open a jersey sweatshirt and adding 13 pearly buttons down the front, that she introduced in 1979.

Since then the company has sold well over 2 million of them, made in the same factory in the northeastern French city of Troyes, in a rainbow of colors and ranging from baby sizes to a 400-square-foot-one that’ll soon hang down the front of the Rue Dieu headquarters.

Her men’s suits also found traction. Worn by Basquiat and Bowie, one even became a silver screen star on Harvey Keitel in Quentin Tarantino’s “Reservoir Dogs.”

The brand also expanded into perfume in the late 1980s and will be launching a new scent called Agnès b. Paris later in the fall.

Many milestones followed, including international expansion that began with a New York City boutique in 1980 before the brand landed in London, Tokyo and Hong Kong. The company, still owned by Troublé’s family, counts over 240 points of sale globally, including 130 in Japan, and more than 1,300 employees.

If she’s in fashion by trade, art is a lifelong passion. As a child, Troublé wanted to be a museum curator.

She opened the Galerie du Jour library-gallery in Paris in 1984, had Basquiat and Keith Haring as friends and in 1968, commissioned 64 photographers to capture the snap cardigan. Those pictures were exhibited at the Centre Pompidou.

These days, she counts Harmony Korine among them and her private home is filled with works from marquee names and emerging talents. The brand’s Artists series of T-shirts, often limited editions, bridges her two worlds. On Nov. 15, this will broaden further through a collaboration with the Louvre, with accessories and clothes for children and adults displaying handwritten declarations of love to the museum and landscapes from its collections.

All of this will be condensed in the Monday show. It’s set to “celebrate her timeless spirit and love for pebbles, the ocean floor, Diderot’s encyclopedia, the Gospel of John, graffiti, Andy Warhol, encounters and coincidences.”