“Bedside critiques of fashion shows by way of runway photos and livestreams can be a dangerous way to judge a creative’s work,” wrote Edward Buchanan on Instagram earlier this month. He added: “Please be careful with your hurtful language… and by all means, please brush up on your culture and fashion history before attempting to criticize the present for clickbait.”
It was no coincidence that Buchanan, mensch that he is, posted the day after Duran Lantink’s debut ready-to-wear show for the house of Jean Paul Gaultier. By that time the show had provoked a wave of excited condemnation from commentators online who seemed most consistently offended by the bodysuit printed with the (hairy) image of a (totally) naked male body worn by a female model. Even at the show itself, some onlookers had found Lantink’s first non-couture collection from the house for a decade or so too challenging for their sensibilities to compute. As Nicole Phelps reported in her review: “Afterwards, an editor with a case of the vapors could be heard wondering aloud, ‘What was that?’”
This was a show about which everybody—from social-media fashion“critics” to seasoned industry professionals with their knickers in a twist—seemed to have a hot take to offer. Here at Vogue Runway, however, there was one point of view we wanted to hear above all others: that of Jean Paul Gaultier himself. The designer, 73, was at the show and apparently enraptured by it, but he slipped into the crowd before we could corner him for a debrief. Just before the weekend, however, he jumped on a call for a conversation that started with controversy before ranging far and wide. Below, edited, is what he had to say.
You seemed quite affected by the show—quite emotional.
Yes, it’s true, I was quite sensitive to what he proposed. Because it gave me an injection of my own beginning, when I started. That energy I had, the way of seeing the clothes. I think it’s funny, but people today maybe know mostly my couture and do not really understand how I was this enfant terrible at the beginning. And for those people who were saying after Duran’s show, “This is not Gaultier”: big mistake! At the end I felt very emotional but also happy at the same time because he was like a rebirth in some way, you know. I was feeling my old energy.
That’s a good feeling!
Yeah!
The negative criticism seemed divided between those you mention who were offended that it did not chime with what they think of as Gaultier, and those who were offended much more broadly by the collection, which they found too much and too transgressive to handle.
Yes, but you know, at the beginning I was very transgressive, and people were rejecting what I was doing too. I remember at my real beginning—my first show—nobody came. And at my second show some of the British press came, and the Japanese press came too, and some even gave it quite a good review. But there were no French, none at all.
That first show is where you showed your cat-food-can jewelry?
Exactly. The story is that one day I was opening a tin of food for the cat. It was the type that you had to twist with a key to open, and it was quite a big tin. And I looked at it and I said, oh that’s nice, it looks like a bracelet. And do you know the tea balls that you use to make tea? I used these to make earrings and things like that. So all my collection was high technology! And you know the automatic ashtrays? I used them as a bag or a belt. Maybe it was not very practical, but it was an idea.
This was at the very beginning, right?
Yes. I had no money, I had nothing, so I used what I could find—even garbage. You know, I made a dress with garbage bags. I was using old denim to make a dress, so in a way I was already recycling, and I used objects as jewelry.
Duran said that he did not look at your archive so he could make a much more impressionistic interpretation of your work. But there were a lot of kisses being blown in the direction of your codes…
I think so, yes. Let’s say that the inspiration was maybe Gaultier, but I think it was his own also. He reinterpreted. For example, even the body, which was very hairy—me, I certainly made nudity, but not with so much hair! He made an accentuation. He brings something extra. It is not a copy, not at all, but maybe it is inspired by.
Once the press—and even the French press—started coming to your shows regularly, you created a few controversies of your own, right?
Yes. There were magazines like Le Figaro which, when they started to make reviews, in reality said “never again” or something like that. But they began to make more proper reviews when they heard that there was a Japanese investor who put some money in my company. That changed their mind, because for them I was becoming more acceptable. But at the beginning the shock effect was very much on the French press, who were more conservative. The English and the Japanese were interested, and they liked the spirit. But in France it has to be more…
Le patrimoine?
Exactement! Like that. Respectful. You know, I did not speak with Duran yet since the show and the comments, but I want to tell him not to be frightened or worried. Although I think what he did in the collection showed that he’s not at all frightened!
If you alienate people who lack much capacity for understanding, it’s no bad thing…
Before, we were not as frightened as people are now—and maybe now sometimes you have to be. When I started, there was a new, young audience that was applauding and supporting. And the more conservative audience was completely away from that. I think now maybe it’s kind of the reverse!
Who called you l’enfant terrible of fashion in the first place?
To be honest, I don’t know from where it came. Probably it was an English journalist. It was never an insult, though—quite the contrary. It was a huuuggggee compliment! Now maybe I could be called the old unterrible! But I was very happy with that, très content. I didn’t like to be the establishment!
I found this wonderful Style File video report on your Chic Rabbis show from 1993. That show would be a hard sell today…
You know, it started at one time when I was in the Jewish quarter in London, I think it was, and I saw these very orthodox Jewish people completely dressed in the costume of their community and faith. They were coming out of a temple: it was very beautiful. I found it so strong— the sight of them being all together, dressing the same way. It was something that said, “We are all together, and we are who we are, and we don’t try to be anything else.” This is something that had an impact on me. My collection was not an aggression—on the contrary. It was something about feeling good in your shoes, about feeling yourself and being proud of yourself, you know. It was about opening your arms.
It generated a slight contretemps at the time, but not a scandal.
You know, I never tried to be controversial or provocative. I was only smelling the spirit of the time. And this is what it is to be a designer: not to analyze too much, but to visually receive. But also remember I had only worked in classical houses before—Jean Patou, which was very conservative with a lot of clichés: gold is very beautiful, black is very beautiful on beige. It was a sort of sum of chic. But what does that mean? Any color can be awful or beautiful; it depends how you make it. But all that mentality, which was haute couture—oh là là là là là!—I felt it was not for my generation.
I think that what you do is the result of the mood of the time, but you do not realize it. I was interested in girls who were different, with a different attitude, gesture, and way of moving. It was a little the punk period. I was going a lot to London, where people were much more demonstrative than in Paris. Different groups had different looks: the Teddies, the skins, and the punks of course—the real punk, the British punk—and Vivienne Westwood, of course, who was somebody very important and who impressed me very much. The English were really speaking with their clothes. When I was going there, I was feeling this energy.
Your vision of man as object of desire was radical on the runways. I’m thinking of the reaction to 1985’s Et Dieu Créa l’Homme. Apparently the New York Times quoted a critic as calling it “revolting.”
This was for égalité between a man and a woman. Because always the woman was an object.
Or the year before, Barbès…
If I did a corset, it was because it was a nice piece of clothing—it was beautiful. But also it was a kind of femininity. And the woman I showed was modern. So there were some very feminine, sometimes sexual clothes, but it was also about being a woman who should decide if she is an object or not. It’s she who decides. It’s about not being under the power of the men. It was a woman who wore it for her pleasure.
I have a friend who was in the clubs a lot in Paris at this time who told me—and I’m paraphrasing delicately here—that if you saw someone in Gaultier, you knew they were on your wavelength.
That’s good, no?
And he also recommended Fassbinder’s Querelle as a film that epitomized that spirit.
Great movie! Great, great movie! And I wanted to show that, yes. Because before, the men had to have either power or money. And the women had to be seductive—only an object. So I said, OK, my man will be the male object. If women are objects, men can be objects too. And women have the right to like the guys who look sexy—this is not only a privilege of the men.
Is it true you sent a live turkey to an editor who gave you a disobliging review?
No! It was a bad joke that got taken the wrong way. Every Christmas all the houses would send the journalists little gifts—maybe a cake or decorations or champagne. And I thought one year, why not send them turkeys? So I ordered some live turkeys to send to each magazine. Only after did I realize—aha!—all the turkeys I had were beautiful but enormous. I think I can understand that somebody who opened it in their office had an unpleasant surprise.
Which makes me think of seeing the horses in your very last show for Hermès. You designing for that most establishment of French houses was also quite radical, non?
Oui! Hermès was an experience I loved. What happened was that Martin Margiela, who had been my assistant, went to Hermès. And I went to the défilés that he did, and I appreciated very much what he did there. I think it was perfect. And casually I was thinking also how I would imagine Hermès. And then, at the same time, Hermès came in for part of my company [Hermès acquired a 35% stake in Gaultier’s fashion house in 1999], so I met the president, who was this fabulous person Jean-Louis Dumas, who was very creative. One time I went to the show of Martin—and bravo, it was géniale—and afterward Jean-Louis Dumas told me Martin was leaving and asked who I thought could replace him. So I suggested some names like Ann Demeulemeester—who could have been very good—and then after a moment I said, “And why not me?” It was like a game, a challenge for me, to work in something so contrary to me. But I saw that Martin had done it so well. And while it was a risk, I loved it. It was a house like a maison couture; the quality is superbe, and they are very into the handmade and discretion—this discretion was very strange for me!
You worked with Pierre Cardin, who is not very celebrated today but was among the biggest stars of the 1960s and ’70s in French fashion.
Cardin was incredible. I started there on my 20th birthday, 24 April 1972. At that time it was him and Saint Laurent. It was around the end of Courrèges, who was fabulous, revolutionary, and had made three new structures: bon. At Cardin everything was possible. He showed me freedom. He cut across the dress without a hemline even before the Japanese. He was inventing all the time, making something wrong. I was like, “My God, what is he doing?” He was fantastic because he was free, and this was my schooling from a master. It showed me that you can reinvent things, and it’s always a game.
Now that you are still terrible but no longer exactly an enfant…
…Not exactly, no!…
Considering the shape of fashion today compared to its shape in 1972, what do you see?
I think there are always some designers who have something to say and something to prove—sometimes most of all to themselves. We all need creation. OK, there are these big groups, but they know they need creativity. Fashion is not like when I started, because now everyone can be a little bit fashion-y—which maybe makes it not so important to be fashion-y, non? And now maybe the artistic director of a fashion house is a job that is important, but it is not so much about the clothes; it is more about the universe and the point of view of the house.
Duran seems focused on expressing a point of view but very much via the clothes.
Yes! And like I said before, his Gaultier collection made me emotional because it made me feel again the younger part of myself and the spirit of my beginnings, which maybe is still there somewhere.
We get older and older, but the internal monologue is always in the same voice as it ever was…
Precisely!