JEAN PAUL GAULTIER knows how to look after his guests. This evening, the designer welcomed us with a hostess who first introduced the show (for a Jean Paul Gaultier collection is always a show), in French and English, telling some jokes and instructing us to clap for the models. The music began and each girl took a number and walked around as though she were at an auction or beauty pageant. We were told what each girl likes – including her hobbies. It was a tad bizarre, but it was also very Jean Paul Gaultier – as was the rest of the show.
“It was an homage to his career and had all of his classics,” said Vogue’s fashion director Lucinda Chambers after the show, noting the tattoo motif that ran throughout to have cropped up 15 years earlier – and pointing out all the JPG staples; the stripy trousers, the trench and the white shirt – to be in there too.
The tattoo motif came on the dresses, the trousers and on sheer bodies. And we also had lots of corsetry (of course), and corset belts – to hold in and sculpt hooded and draped ensembles of green and white, tops cutaway to lead into trousers, nomadic jewellery and a cast of characters, an artist among them. There were the tailoring mash-ups and there was sexy Forties siren hair and then neon and African-inspired beading and the girls wearing piercings up and down their ears. Relatively subtle and conservative to begin with (pinstripes only lend themselves to so much), the palette towards the ends digressed into flower prints and fluoros – green, yellow and orange.
It was, to say the least, intimate - from the fact that the backstage became the front stage set up and JPG himself was visible and sending the models out, from how we got to know the girls themselves. Once they were “introduced”, they headed towards a “fashion shoot” to have their picture taken and that was that.
SEE THE JEAN PAUL GAULTIER SHOW ARCHIVE