His platinum crop volumized into a big white bouffant, Jean Paul Gaultier did his victory lap on the catwalk with a can of Elnett, which he sprayed liberally into the air. At the very least, his presentation was a salute to the hairdresser s craft. Odile Gilbert, who always does the hair for Gaultier s shows, even appeared onstage for the finale. This time, she had teased, tricked, and exaggerated the models coifs into spectacular simulacra of the do sported by Warren Beatty as L.A. hairdresser/gigolo George in the 1975 movie Shampoo. The bouffant- n -burns look was matched to clothes that also might have laced the wardrobe of a West Coast groover in the mid-seventies. You could imagine deep-rust velvets, rich ponyskins, and a kilim-patterned velvet cardigan with a knitted shawl collar warming up a cool night in Laurel Canyon. And the zodiac-sign print was purest California.
Gaultier also obliged with an imaginative make-do for the urban cowboy: The calves of leather pants were embossed with trompe l oeil boots. But the master of couture gender games had more up his sleeve. Legging-slender trousers (in bronze Lurex, even) and a tracksuit topped with a monkey fur shrug had the campy homme fatal glamour that is Gaultier s special contribution to the lexicon of modern masculinity. He s always understood that ambiguity can be an asset, in the same way that assumptions are a liability. Look at what hairdresser George got away with simply because the husbands of his lovers assumed he must be gay.
