Cardigan #2, 2019 © David Lynch
If you have ever visited the Château de Versailles gardens, you may have stumbled across a statue of a broad-shouldered gentleman holding a plant whilst overlooking quadrants of neatly growing fruit and vegetable patches. The individual in question is Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie, who was the director of the Royal fruit and vegetable gardens at the palace in the 17th century. His influence, whilst initially in botanics has since extended to sartorial matters: in 1979, Versailles-born designer agnès b. used his green waistcoat (as modelled by his statue) as reference for her now iconic snap cardigan.
Neat and bestowing a universally accessible design, the initial iteration of the garment had 13 press studs arranged down the middle of a parted cotton fleece sweatshirt. The French designer was initially designing a cardigan with herself in mind, and as a fan of both the renaissance arrangement of snap studs and the modern comfort of the sweatshirt then opted to combine the two.
Left: Binx, Accra, Ghana, 2019 © Jurgen Teller, Courtesy of Galerie Suzanne Tarasieve, Paris. Right: Sophie -1900, 2019 © Camille Vivier.
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the snap cardigan last year, agnès b assembled some of the world’s most revered photographers to honour her classic design in a new exhibition in New York. The exhibition, entitled Photographers… Artists and the Snap Cardigan, pays homage to an earlier exhibition curated by the designer in 1986 at Galerie du Jour in Paris (and later in 1996 at Centre Pompidou), which was originally conceived out of the realisation that “photographers are never given the same subject, and that they would each have their own vision of the garment.”
For the upcoming exhibition, 70 photographers have been commissioned to reinterpret the wardrobe staple, including Juergen Teller, JIM JOE, David Lynch, Carly Steinbrunn, Camille Vivier and Mark Cohen. All of the contributing artists received the same brief to offer their own interpretation of the cardigan as the subject of a 40 x 60 cm photograph. Among these is a recent a black and white Jim Jarmusch shot of a newly-pregnant Chloë Sevigny sporting the cardigan whilst lounging on a plush settee.
The cardigan’s creator calls it “a child’s garment for grown-ups, or the other way round,” and given our belief in the transformational effect of aspirational dressing it should come as little surprise that we are still fixated with the snap cardigan four decades on.
See more from the exhibition below:
… PHOTOGRAPHERS … ARTISTS AND THE SNAP CARDIGAN opens in New York from 8 February running through to 1 March 2020, at 195 Chrystie Street.