After his well-deserved retirement, Jean Paul Gaultier handed over the reins of his Haute Couture show each season to designers who will reinterpret the brand under their own homage-paying vision.
Sacai’s Chitose Abe opened the ball of collaborations, followed by Diesel and Y/Project’s Glenn Martens, it was now Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing’s turn to present his own couture vision of Jean Paul Gaultier, littered with historical references.
“You can’t have a Jean Paul Gaultier fashion show without putting men in it”, explained Olivier Rousteing. In fact, it was the men who opened the show to the sound of Kanye West’s ‘’Black Skinhead’’. The 14 men’s looks drew their inspiration from the archives of the label of 325 rue Saint Martin, including the Spring/Summer 1994 collection ‘’Les Tatouages’’ which has definitely changed forever the fashion for putting men in skirts, embodying a disregard for gender norms.
Layered prints, colorful stripes and denim mixes, baggy shorts and asymmetrical coats offering the illusion of dresses, matched with dramatic beaded necklaces, nose-to-tail chains and 90s sunglasses. Cool, effortless and easy-to-wear silhouettes that announce themselves as “an open letter to Jean Paul, an open letter of love”.
Then came women’s fashion, with many iconic and emblematic pieces revisited, such as the iconic conical bustier, made unforgettable by Madonna, from his ‘’Le Dadaïsme’’ collection (1983) – here, the piece was declined in suits, suits or dresses; as the silhouette inspired by the design of ‘’Le Mâle’’, a great success of Gaultier’s perfumes; as the tuxedo dresses in trompe-l’oeil, pleated and of course, the marinière revisited, for example, in oversized feathers.
“Jean Paul Gaultier is an extremely rich house, it is a book with many chapters. The difficulty for me is to manage to choose some of them and there is still a lot to explore for all the other designers who will succeed to this collaboration”, concluded Olivier Rousteing.
©Jean Paul Gaultier
