Jean Paul Gaultier is Paris, fashion and haute-couture. It’s a name, a brand, applied to perfumes, corsets and marinières. All iconic pieces created by Gaultier, which have brought him international fame. More than fame, it’s the designer’s likeability and simplicity that make so many people love him. Open about who he is and where he comes from, never pretending to be haughty, Jean Paul Gaultier is the kind of designer you’d want to sit down and have a chat with, but of course you’d never pat him on the back. A great man from both here and abroad. A talent from another world, who knows and gets involved in everyday issues concerning the turning points of society. With his feet firmly planted on the ground and his head in the stars?
Shamelessly chatting, laughing your head off, chatting about films, icons, wearing a sailor suit or a kilt: your choice would probably be Jean Paul Gaultier.
This year, he said goodbye to prêt-à-porter to devote himself to haute couture. Loïc Prigent has dedicated a documentary to him, and a retrospective of his work is currently on view at the Grand Palais. Couturier star? It’s a fact! Unveil the reasons for his popularity, the mysteries of a designer….
Its links with the arts, whether considered popular or classical:
Jean-Paul Gaultier has always skilfully blended the arts. His inspirations are diverse. From aluminum cans to tattoos and icons from music and cinema. Anything can become a potential starting point for a collection. And these collections are made for everyone: Madonna, Yvette Horner, Kurt Cobain and Inès de la Fressange. The list of personalities who have turned to the designer seems inexhaustible, zany, out of the ordinary. Fear of anything: he presents the MTV Awards, Eurovision, or a show with his good friend Antoine de Caunes (EuroTrash) – described as hyper-vulgar. He could launch a reality show on a TNT channel set in an underground club, with Catherine Deneuve, Faye Dunaway and other characters in helium-inflated costumes, and nothing would seem strange. In fact, he’s more or less done it already.
His inspirations and collaborations break down stereotypes, and reveal a conception of culture that doesn’t stop at museums, theaters and other holy places of letters and painting.
Range of capabilities:
All forms of art can inspire the creator. We’ve already stressed this. But it’s also the art world that recurrently calls on him. Particularly cinema and music. Mylène Farmer and Madonna have repeatedly turned to him for their stage outfits. In the film world, Pedro Almodovar and Luc Besson are just a few examples. For each film, each tour, it’s a universe that each artist must create. Gaultier seems gifted with a fabulous capacity for adoption: he can just as easily immerse himself in the futuristic world of The Fifth Element, as in Almodovar’s Spanish-accented costumes. A brilliant man, never short of creativity.
Her sexual freedom:
Gender confusion: Conchita Wurst closed one of his last shows, Amanda Lear walked his catwalk and models with androgynous looks have always been present at his side. If he plays on hyper-virility with his perfume “le mâle”, it’s not so much to tell men what they should be, but to say that whatever their sexual orientation, it’s a fantasy, the fantasy of a sexuality free of taboos, that can be sniffed out from a mile away. Similarly, he addressed the issue of marriage for all long before it hit the streets – notably in 2005 with his show entitled “le mariage homosexuel” (“gay marriage”). It’s clear that for the designer, the debate isn’t about sexual orientation or gender, but about the possibility of blossoming into what you want to be. Being a woman or a man, heterosexual, butch, trans: no problem, but you still need the space to be it. And that’s what Gaultier offers.
Paris, corsets, marinières. Everyone knows a piece of Gaultier. As a result, he’s part of everyone’s heritage, albeit in different ways, but everyone has a story to tell about Gaultier. Whether it’s the scent of Madame perfume, a song by The Gosssip, which reminds us that the couturier dressed the group’s singer when she married his long-time partner; the image of Catherine Deneuve at the last Cannes Film Festival, or Inès de la Fressange running down the catwalk and falling laughing. To each his own memory of the couturier; to each his own Gaultier.
In just a few years, the French and the whole world have embraced Gaultier. For foreigners, he symbolizes Paris. It’s true that he possesses the appeal, the chic, the bright lights that are so characteristic of the capital. On Gaultier’s “maps”, there would be the arrondissement extravagance, the arrondissement kilt, the arrondissement robe de marier; all under the capital of freedom.
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