Jean Paul Gaultier works a theme like a last nerve. Today s was clearly big cats…big lady cats, to be precise: lionesses, tigresses, cougars. His Couture collection was a celebration of Woman as Predator. The outfits—and the names that Gaultier gave them—had a man-eating subtext: Pussy Faster was a leopard-spotted biker jacket, Catwoman a dark maîtresse-stern concoction of animalist jacquard and Lurex lace, and Cruella de Ville starred ocelot spots in a coat of feathers artfully "camouflaged" as fur. And Black Panther, the last look before the Bride, was modeled by Nabilla Benattia, a mantrap who is tabloid bait in France for her reality TV antics. The word bustier could have been invented just for her.
Given that Gaultier s catwalk vedettes in his glory days included Madonna and Björk, Benattia seemed a bit down-market, but the show had a sheeny brashness that she suited. There was a definite emphasis on exaggerated, almost cartoonish curves rather than elegant lines. There was exaggeration too in the peculiar pannier/pocket hybrid that helped shape the silhouette. They looked a bit like something Bowie might have worn once. Gaultier clearly had him on his mind, because he used his song titles for other outfits. Suffragette City was a plain black velvet dress underpinned by a fiery orange petticoat, stockings, and matching shoes. Stark and sensual—that did the trick. A few outfits later, a "millefeuille de mousselines" echoed Yves Saint Laurent s way with color, as a reminder that Gaultier was once considered the one true heir to the throne of French fashion. But that was once upon a time, and that time has, sad to say, well and truly passed.
