Once upon a time—actually about two years ago—I was asked to work on the Catwalk book about Jean Paul Gaultier. Upon looking at an Excel sheet that listed all of Gaultier’s womenswear collections (ready-to-wear and couture) between 1976 and 2020, my initial excitement about the project turned into terror. Each book in the series provides a comprehensive look at a designer’s career with reviews and often unseen pictures from every collection. Gradually, though, I turned back to flesh from stone, lured by the joy of research. Gaultier is many things—but boring isn’t one of them.
Now that the tome—it’s a heavy volume—is out, and I’ve been asked by my editor to talk a bit about my Gaultier adventure. I’ll start with a few takeaways that focus on the big picture followed by some very subjective subjects that delighted me during the process.
Gaultier, who has always played up heez Frenchiness (see the EuroTrash TV series and his dance single “How to Do That”), really lives by the national motto of “liberté, égalité, fraternité.” In so doing, he changed fashion in profound ways that today we take for granted. Street-casting is just one example of how the designer proselytized his belief that there’s beauty in individuality and difference. His casts represented the diversity, in terms of race, age, size, and gender, that could be found in France. Much of his career was a reaction to the well-mannered, elitist bourgeois values and aesthetics of the place. From collection to collection, he rejected them outright or took them apart and put them back together in his own way.
For Gaultier, fashion was always a trickle-up proposal, as might be expected from a protegé of Pierre Cardin who, as the story goes, hired Gaultier on his 18th birthday. Prêt-à-porter, which challenged the supremacy of couture, was not recognized by French fashion’s governing body until 1973, just a few years before Gaultier showed his first collection. Its title, Biker of the Opera, was indicative of the high/low dichotomy that defines so much of his work. Gaultier started with ready-to-wear and worked up to couture, and there was always a fluidity between the two categories of dress, with techniques and motifs trading freely between them, albeit executed with different materials and techniques. Gaultier threw down the gauntlet with his first couture collection, for spring 1997, showing garments made of upcycled denim among the more precious designs.
This flattening of genres, if that’s the correct expression, is a sort of extension of the designer’s thinking of gender. As a couturier, Gaultier was heralded as a successor of Yves Saint Laurent who introduced the liberated woman to fashion. Gaultier did the same for men—in part for the benefit of those forward-thinking dames. “My clothes are not about androgyny, not about uni-sex; they are about sexual equality,” he told The Observer in 1984. “Men can be glamorous, they can be fragile and beautiful too. They have to be sexy and seductive today. Women are waiting for that.” Gaultier, ever the optimist, has always been for the world united, not divided.
Homme Plus
Gaultier believes that anyone can wear the pants—or a skirt, for that matter.
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Deconstruction
Martin Margiela might be recognized as fashion’s foremost deconstructivist today, but he learned some of what he knew from Gaultier who was taking things apart, turning them upside down, sideways, and backwards almost from the start.
Jeans Couture
When Yves Saint Laurent showed his version of the Beat look at Christian Dior couture, he lost his job. Times had changed when Gaultier showed denim at couture.
Madonna
The costumes Gaultier designed for Madonna’s Blonde Ambition tour cemented his place in pop culture history. Their association was a long one, and the designer proposed to her three times.
Muses
Back in the day, Gaultier would meet people out and about and sometimes cast them for his shows. Stephen Jones had to decline because of an injury, but Jay Alexander accepted. A cadre of models including Julia Schönberg, Rossy de Palma, Christine Bergstrom, Tanel Bedrossiantz, Claudia Huidobro, Vladimir McCrary, Farida Khelfa, Dita Von Teese, and Suzanne Von Aichinger were house favorites. In putting together the Catwalk book, I became fascinated with one of the designer’s earliest muses, Anna Pawlowski, who walked the first show and eventually wrote a book about her time working with Gaultier. Note that she is wearing Tabis in 1981.
Naughty Nuns
One of the shows that was new and most intriguing to me was spring 1990’s Rap’Sisters. The naughty nuns caused an outrage. Imagine having models—and Neneh Cherry—rise up through the floor and spin on platforms in those days of analog technology. Kim Jones had modern equipment on his side when did something similar at Dior Homme for spring 2024.
House Codes
Gaultier’s best known French codes are the striped marinière and the trench coat (which originated in London, a formative city for the designer). Yet his references to the City of Light, and the country as a whole, are many and range from the Can-Can to a type of Provençal relief embroidery known as boutis. An example of the fluidity of techniques between Gaultier’s ready-to-wear and couture can be seen below.
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“Kitsch-n silk”
Like almost all designers starting out, Gaultier was working on a shoe-string budget. Among the materials he used for his debut collection were straw placemats. The designer famously transformed tin cans into jewelry—and later packaging for his very successful fragrances. Tea-balls, copper scrubbers, and feather dusters also were given Cinderella-like transformations and sent down the runway.
Enfants Terribles?
Though Gaultier’s runways were always enlivened by his camp sense of humor, there was little childish about his work. This makes his reference to dolls stand out. He linked the subject to folklore in spring 1986. Later, when models walked atop a glass runway supported by a legion of plastic baby dolls for fall 2003, the designer was thinking about “growing up…but always remembering the child in us.”
Triple Play
Gaultier had his own rule of thirds; tripartite silhouettes are a recurring motif.
Influences
The designers with which Gaultier seems to have the most affinities are Elsa Schiaparelli who brought Surrealism and the slight of hand known as trompe l’oeil into fashion, and Yves Saint Laurent, whose grasp of Parisian elegance, particularly through tailoring, Gaultier’s is a match for.
Madcap Magic
Gaultier marked 30 years in business with some legerdemain and the help of fashion insiders. “"It’s because they are magic, and fashion is magic!” he told Suzy Menkes. Years before he had given an interview with only his head sticking out of a magic box. Watch the clip below.
Repeat Performances
What can be new in a post-modern world? A point of view, for one. Gaultier, who reworked old couture pieces for new collections, didn’t discard ideas easily, rather he returned and reframed them in ways that resonated with the moment.
