Bohemian. Jean Paul Gaultier AW23 Couture

July 7, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

The guest designer gigs at Jean Paul Gaultier have become one of the best moments of haute couture fashion weeks. Julien Dossena‘s take on the couturier’s legacy was definitely a triumph. (Paco) Rabanne’s creative director wanted to achieve “a feeling of characters you pass in the street in Paris,” he said. “I wanted to make all of them queens, each with a different crown.” The honor of being able to bring his interpretation to the work of a national treasure of French couture couldn’t have been more sincerely felt. “Jean Paul was the first designer I ever saw on TV when I was very young. Watching him, I understood for the first time: oh, fashion can be a job! What he did (became) infused into my cultural background in general.” Over lunch with his idol, Dossena discovered that Gaultier had known Paco Rabanne, who had recently passed away. “He asked me to make something to honor him. But I had from him this complete sense of freedom. There’s this feeling in the couture ateliers that anything can be done.”

At Rabanne, Dossena’s ability to modernize chainmail and turn it into new techniques in zillions of ways has been one of the hallmarks of his talent – that, and the slant on bohemian glamour that frequently comes through his collections. His unmistakable double-salute to Gaultier and Rabanne was to whip up a replica of the famous pointy-bra dress from Gaultier’s first collection in 1984 in silver chainmail. But the dimension of Gaultier’s work which sparked Dossena’s imagination the most was his street-observation and inclusiveness – decades before it became fashionable. “Jean Paul was really the first to treat fashion as almost sociology, watching what people wear in the street, expressing communities in his shows. Joyously mixing people together.” Dossena’s presentation of chic-ified looks included a pinstriped trouser suit and a lace dress over a pair of trompe l’oeil beaded jeans with sweeping trains. Mid-way, in a stunning moment that spoke dramatically to the beauty of human togetherness, he draped shining gold and silver swathes of chainmail to connect pairs of models – a man apparently carrying a woman’s train, and two individualistic goddess warriors, each symbolizing a different culture. There were references to Gaultier’s giant trapper hat, to the sweeping floor length coats in his “Rabbi Chic” collection, and to off-the shoulder lace he used in his “La Concierge est Dans l’Escalier” show. Dossena said he’d deeply related to Gaultier’s habit of trawling flea-markets for vintage finds – a route into developing rich techniques. Part-way, there was a dress made of Irish-crochet lace, embroidered with gold paillettes meticulously made to look vintage. There was a peach satin lingerie dress layered over black lace, a floral lace apron worn over tailoring. And just as you thought Dossena might have missed a little something of the subversive wit that got Gaultier permanently labeled the Enfant Terrible of French fashion, sure enough, there it was. Clearly glimpsed through a couple of sheer dresses, a pair of trompe l’oeil embroideries of pubic hair. Sitting in the front row, Jean Paul Gaultier raised his eyebrows and chuckled as they passed by.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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That’s Haute. Jean Paul Gaultier by Haider Ackermann SS23 Couture

January 27, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Oh Haider, we’ve missed you. The news of Haider Ackermann being the next guest designer for Jean Paul Gaultier‘s haute couture dialogue felt unreal. Until the first model appeared on the ice-blue carpet under the roof of Gaultier’s house. Everything came together: the sense of the haute values of design being the point of it. The models who really delivered a show and poses. Gaultier’s haute couture house ateliers who expressed it in body-sharp tailoring, and crisply-scissored drape. And of course Haider Ackermann, the designer who with his signature style and incredible artistry could lead a couple of snoozy Parisian houses (Givenchy, for instance). Ackermann is the fourth of the designers to have been tapped on the shoulder for a one-season collaboration, since Gaultier retired. He follows Olivier Rousteing of Balmain, Glenn Martens of Y/Project, and Chitose Abe of Sacai. Ackermann, the most grown-up guest thus far, was perhaps aesthetically the least likely yet to have been invited to respond to Gaultier’s storied metier. As he admitted just before the show, “I don’t have a sense of humor at all! I have my gravity, and he has his generosity and joy – we are two worlds apart. But at the same time, we have many things in common. Because we both love women, we adore women, respect women.” The convergence he found began with Gaultier’s tailoring. “To go back to the essence of his work, which was perfect. People forget how immaculate his tailoring was. His work was magical. So I tried to go back to the pure lines, to find a calmness and moment of grace. Because I believe his work was magical.” When the women began to walk out, they slowly and with a deliberate collectivity embodied the spirit of old-world couture stances, pausing to strike poses in front of photographers as if they were in an Irving Penn shoot. The pace and the intimacy of the staging meant that every single lingering silhouette and detail could be taken in close-up. The whiteness of the cuffs on immaculate black trouser suits, cut sometimes with tailcoats and conceptual plackets of frogging, sometimes reduced to pure minimal outline. One skinny-trousered two-piece came with a diagonal slash across the jacket and a hip-level obi-cummerbund – a stunning aesthetic fusion of Ackermann and Gaultier in one look. On top of that, Ackermann proved himself as a colorist and a dressmaker, draping extraordinary serpentine gowns and varieties of chic coat dresses with contrasting linings. It made it sink in how rare it is these days that outstanding drama and chic minimalism go together. Somehow, high fashion now has a need for being loud and gimmick-y. This, without turning backwards or being in the least camp, made a progressive case for the sensational powers of haute couture in the modern world. That was Ackermann’s intention: to bring the subject of haute couture back to the clothes. He did that superbly. “I knew Jean Paul liked my work, but I never thought this would come my way. I’m already a long time in business. It’s usually like, okay, give it to the younger ones,” he said. “And so, to design is one of the most wonderful feelings. I really love my job, and this made me love it even more. It’s been like a love affair between me, and the ladies in the atelier.” The arrangement with the house is for one season only. “It makes me sad to leave all this behind. But if I’ve created 10 minutes of grace when everyone can forget about their problems, and I’ve honored Monsieur, and something that’s also necessary for fashion in 2023, then I’ll be happy.”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Fab, Fab World. Jean Paul Gaultier AW22 Couture

July 9, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

“This show is an open letter to Jean Paul, an open letter of love,” Olivier Rousteing announced in the Gaultier studio before the unveiling of the antic collection that Gaultier had invited him to design as the third iteration of the project that hands the reins of his couture house to a different designer each season. When the two designers first met to discuss the project four months ago, and right after Rousteing had presented his autumn-winter Balmain collection, he confided to Jean Paul Gaultier: “You’re my inspiration. And you broke so many boundaries for me as a kid.” Dressed backstage in a matelot striped top and an asymmetric kilt, Rousteing had clearly taken the brief very seriously. “Jean Paul wrote a fashion book with many chapters,” Rousteing explained. “And the reality is that you need to understand what chapter from Jean Paul is closer to you and the emotions that you obviously are more into.” For Rousteing, this meant a series of very personal snapshots. A memory of his father with Gaultier’s iconic Le Male fragrance in its tin can casing, for instance, or Madonna dressed by Gaultier in a nipple-freeing ensemble for a 1992 amfAR gala. “If you think about that today, we cannot [go there],” Rousteing noted, and in fact his iteration featured trompe l’oeil exposed breasts. “So he was ahead of his time about freedom of expression. Today, we talk about inclusivity, we talk about diversity, we talk about breaking boundaries, we talk about no binaries, no gender. Obviously, Jean Paul was the first one to do it.” Rousteing opened his show with menswear, inspired by the tattoo collection of 1994 that he considers a celebration of diversity, and then broke into one statement womenswear piece after another, playing on the Gaultier themes of corsetry, repurposed denim, and Breton fishermen’s sweaters, among others, many of the looks teetering on platform heels inspired by those tin cans.

And Rousteing reveled in the craftsmanship of Gaultier’s ateliers. In homage, there were garments fashioned from a dressmaker’s tape measures, a heart-shaped pin cushion bodice, and gloves with thimbles for finger tips. And noting the designer’s passion for the liquid draperies of Madame Grès (and the dressmaking genius who worked for her and now for Gaultier), Rousteing worked her iconic techniques into some looks that included a sweeping corseted pink sweatshirt that ballooned into an opera coat in back and draped into a siren skirt in front. Meanwhile, what appeared to be a woven menswear pinstripe was actually an illusion created with insertions of white crepe – a process that took 600 hours. Rousteing revisited Gaultier’s feathery interpretation of matelot stripes, another iteration of the Breton sweater that morphed into a Watteau train in back. In a further celebration of the craftsmanship of the house, the running order of the show listed each premiere main and modeliste responsible for the various elements of each look next to its description. Rousteing stepped out of the studios, however, to create a brace of molded glass bodices made by the expert responsible for the stained glass windows of Notre Dame, no less. Gaultier himself had wanted the collection to be a complete surprise. When the show opened with a soundtrack mashup of Gaultier himself expressing his design ideas to various media outlets through the years, he blushed bright pink. By the end of the show he was beaming. “Zat was fantastic!” he declared, “He took my things and then did it his way – and the technique – fab, fab, fab!”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Glenn Enters The Chat. Jean Paul Gaultier SS22 Couture

January 29, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Y/Project’s Glenn Martens unveiled his vision of Jean Paul Gaultier haute couture—the second designer to do so, after Chitose Abe of Sacai last season – and it appeared to be a heavenly match. What makes this collection so magical, so right and so much fun? It’s an escapist exercise in what you can do when you’re let loose in the wunderateliers that are the Gaultier workrooms. Plus, as we all well know, Martens knows how to make a brilliant and inventive silhouette. One of the looks he was furiously working on is a Breton marinière which has been turned into a dress and then hand-embroidered to ripple 3D-style with hundreds of faux coral fronds. The sailor stripes are pure Gaultier, yet the twists to this dress – the folded-over shoulder line, the knit panel which sinuously and unexpectedly juts out from the left hip – are pure Martens at Y/Project. “I am only doing this for one season, so it’s not like I have to envision a whole new future for the house; that’s a very different exercise,” Martens said. “This is a celebration of Gaultier. I’ve stayed close to the woman Jean Paul created in the past—pure diva goddess beauty, hips, whatever, all that drama he loved. I’m building on that through what I think of his iconic Gaultier moments. This marinière…it’s so him, but I completely fucked it up with all the fake coral spikes. I’m reinventing those iconic moments in my own way.” That’s what makes Martens’s version of Gaultier couture fly: the acknowledgement that it can’t be a retread of the past glories of one of fashion’s greatest designers, but instead honor what went before and incorporate the best of yourself. It is not C as in collaboration ( a word which is looking increasingly passé) but C as in conversation, a constant state of respectfully going back and forth between incoming designer and the heritage of the house.

That marinière dress was sandwiched between a series of corseted jacquard knit looks, whose body molding striations recall ’90s Gaultier and plenty of gorgeous, ethereal evening dresses, confections of chiffon selvedge, whose lightness were amplified by the ferocious ingenuity of their barely visible inner constructions. One, in black chiffon across a delicately pale pink corset, was a particular knockout. The interaction between the two visions continued with an evening gown in a boudoir-y, peignoir-y ’30s peach which looked like a deconstructed corset, the lacing asymmetrically blown up across the billowing skirts, while a cream knit sweater dress featured cable panels that intersected, baring a little skin along the way. Elsewhere, those wired experimental volumes Martens loves so much figured prominently, in red velvet or green taffeta, as did a wink-wink to Y/Project with the Y shaping of the hips on some of his silhouettes, his own version of the classic hourglass but reimagined for today. Martens was drafted in to do this collection two years ago, so because of the pandemic, it has been in gestation for a while. Yet, despite that, it feels hardwired to the moment. While it will very likely appeal to Gaultier couture loyalists, it will also speak to today’s fashion-savvy IG generation who applaud every big gesture and historically savvy flourish.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Men’s – Body. Y/project AW22

January 21, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

There was a lot to unpack in this men’s autumn-winter and women’s pre-fall 2022 Y/Project show. This must be why it was held in a spaceship-sized logistics artery on the northern edge of Paris that every day, all day, connects freight trains and trucks bringing goods into the city with 23 loading bays’ worth of courier vehicles. The epic venue offered beyond-enough room for social distancing. And it made for a runway so long that by my watch it took a full four minutes for the models to transit from one end to the other. Amongst the models were two fashion insiders that are close to Glenn Martens: Camille Bidault-Waddington and Olivier Theyskens. Theyskens said just before the show started: “Glenn proposed it to me. I know him and I love him. We work in the same neighborhood and we both come from Belgium.” The next highlight of the collection: the creative presence of Jean Paul Gaultier. Next week during the haute couture presentations, Martens will moonlight as a one-season only creative director for Jean Paul Gaultier. At this ready-to-wear show, Martens presented first hints of the dialogue: “We took one of his most iconic prints and we interpreted it in a Y/Project way. It’s very layered – you have men’s prints and women’s prints and they go on top of each other.” The trompe l’oeil body prints and penis pants that Martens was referring to, and which will be part of Y/Project’s Gaultier-facing ready-to-wear capsule, were certainly striking and worked well with the Belgian designer’s signature garment distortion.