· By Bourgine Caroline
This week's report - June 21, 2026
Hey, it’s Father’s Day. Happy Father’s Day to Pierre Bourgine and his counterparts!
Caroline, Pierre & Sophie-Anne Bourgine (1995)
To mark the occasion, let’s put a guy in the spotlight of this issue: Matthäus Schwartz, one of the inspirations behind our Renaissance collection.
Portrait of Matthäus by Christoph Amberger (1542). If you read this letter until the end, you’ll see him naked.
Matthäus Schwarz was neither a king, nor a painter, nor a saint. He came from a family of carpenters based in Augsburg, and trained as a merchant in Milan and Venice, where he learned accounting. He later became the “chief accountant” of the Fugger company.
Good for him, but why is he featured in the Bourgine newsletter?
Matthäus Schwarz had one great passion: clothing. So great, in fact, that it earned him the nickname Kleidernarr — the “clothes fanatic”.
Fabulous!
From 1520 onwards, and for nearly forty years, he had his full-length outfits painted — first by Narziß Renner, then by an artist from Christoph Amberger’s workshop. Each image recorded the date, the occasion, and often the sitter’s age.
The archive begins even before his birth, with his mother’s pregnancy.
He was the stylist of his own portraits, choosing the outfits, poses and occasions he wished to pass down to posterity.
7-year-old, with his dad
19 years, 7 months et 10 days, to be precise
Breeches and hose influencer
The result is Matthäus Schwarz’s Trachtenbuch: a bound manuscript, produced between 1520 and 1560, in which a man’s life is told through his clothes.
Augsburg’s best dressed accountant
Perfect outfit for a 22-year-old man
Game over
The textile autobiography ends with Matthäus as an elderly gentleman in a cape:
Here are a few Matthäus-approved ideas for our patient accountant, Estelle:
And as promised:
🤭,
Bourgine
15 rue Racine à Paris
Lundi-Samedi, 11h-19h
Dimanche, 13h-19h