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“Years ago, I designed a cardigan for myself. I wanted a cardigan with a lot of snaps, to look just like a Renaissance garment, a children’s garment for grown-ups, or the other way around."
the origins
Since its creation in 1979, the snap cardigan has never stopped changing. Whether a long cardigan or short bolero, in leather, with snaps around the neck, or as a long dress, agnès b. loves to transform her iconic creation. For women, men and children, the snap cardigan has been designed in many different colors, fabrics, and prints, including polka dots, florals, and stripes.
women's snap cardigans
men's snap cardigans
© David Lynch, 2019
some history...
“I was always wearing sweatshirts, and one day I thought that it would be really cool to open them, like the cardigans that I was buttoning on my way to school. I imagined all this snaps buttons very closed in order to have a garment like a Renaissance clothing, or a priest's robe. So that's the story of the snap cardigan. I've created a model for me in white, then in black, I've made some cardigans for babies and men, and now they are for everybody!”
The “organic” press-on cardigan is certified by the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS)*, the world's leading standard for the manufacture of garments from organic fibers. The GOTS standard is one of the most demanding in the world.
It requires environmental and social criteria to be met throughout the textile supply chain, from the harvesting of raw fibers to the finished product.
Maison agnès b. is delighted to have obtained this certification and to be able to apply it, for the first time, to this garment that agnès b. is particularly fond of!
GOTS certified selection
black cotton Métro shirt
white cotton Violaine shirt
cardigan evolutions
The original cardigan was made of cotton fleece, with a straight body, round neckline and two tabs at the back. Later offered to children and men, agnès b. didn't hesitate to give it regular metamorphoses: in leather rather than fleece, with short sleeves, strapless, fitted... It remains a unique and timeless garment. It has never ceased to be... The agnès b. cardigan in long or bolero versions, in black leather, with snaps at the neckline, as a long dress, with a high collar or simple neckline...
© Steven Silverstein, 1986
photographers and the snap cardigan
Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Steven Silverstein, Jeanloup Sieff, Dominique Issermann, William Klein, Sophie Calle, Steve Hiett and Gilles Bensimon were among the 64 photographers exhibited at galerie du jour in 1986. These photographs were shown again ten years later, in 1996, at the Centre Pompidou. Elle magazine called it a “consecration” for the agnès b. cardigan, which made its debut at the museum. Paris Match, meanwhile, was full of praise, calling it a “cult item”, “one of the emblems of Parisian chic”, which “shines in its simplicity”.
cardigan cut and material guide
