A Look Back at 31 of Jean Paul Gaultier’s Most Unforgettable Couture Looks
Last week Jean Paul Gaultier announced on Twitter that he’d take his final runway bow at the finish of his spring 2020 couture show, which took place today. Since then Instagram has been flooded with reminiscences of Gaultier’s career from admirers and collaborators. It’s a long trajectory, indeed. Gaultier, who trained with Pierre Cardin, started making clothes under his own name in 1982; his couture debut—which you can see here on Vogue Runway—was for spring 1997. The clothes he showed then set a template for what was to follow over the next 23 years and 40 or so couture collections.
Gaultier has a signature personal style as well as a well-defined design aesthetic, and there is some crossover between the two. The designer’s recurrent use of stripes and plaid reference his one-time uniform of a Breton sweater, kilt, and combat boots. Over the years, Gaultier has interpreted the stripes of the sailor’s sweater in myriad ways. The most unforgettable, in my book, was a dress that went from knit top to marabou hem, for spring 2000. Feathers, worked into intricate patterns as if they were fabric, or left to float, are among Gaultier’s favorite materials. He’s quite handy with leather (he did do a stint at Hermès, after all), and he has returned time and again to a more humble fabric, denim, even in the couture. Haute jeans might be taken in stride today, but that wasn’t the case when Gaultier started showing them.
