Art and Fashion in the 1980s

This chapter looks at French art and culture of the 1980s in a different light. The French cultural scene of the 1980s was often described as split between a triumphant industry of media, entertainment, fashion, and luxury on the one hand, and a heavily subsidized and institutionalized contemporary art sector transformed by the decade's effervescent “cultural policies” on the other. The fashion designer Agnès b.'s long-standing collaboration with artists in the late 1970s and 1980s is one example of how some of the most experimental and interesting arts ventures developed within a commercial context. In 1978, Agnès b. initiated the production of clothes including artists' images, starting with silkscreened T-shirts, then moving on to more elaborate collaborations in 1980. By the mid-1980s, Agnès b.'s business, together with the neighborhood of Les Halles more generally, had undergone a thorough transformation.