Profile of Fashion Designer

Jean Paul Gaultier

Gaultier the Iconoclast Tradition-defying Jean-Paul Gaultier has kept his mischievous attitude even though he is firmly ensconced within the inner sanctum reserved for the Fashion Greats. At the end of each of his fashion shows, instead of coming onstage to take his bow, he walks the runway like a kid, hopping and jumping.  View Jean Paul Gaultier's photos from the show He seems proud of himself, smiling like a youngster who’s just done something naughty. Gaultier has always stolen the show: as a tot and in the classroom, the darling of the women of his childhood, and as an adult in front the cameras or in a fashion show. After all, his first success came while in class, when his teacher, thinking she was punishing him, had him parade around the classroom and display the drawing of Folies Bergères girls he had done in his schoolbook. The one whom classmates shunned because he wasn’t interested in football became the boldest and the most interesting character of all. His saucy drawings certainly had a lot to do with it! That classroom punishment became his first fashion show and helped him understand the rules of show business. He has continued to turn even the worst situations to his advantage, making each of his atypical models unique, cosmopolitan, multisocial. It all started with Nana, the battered old teddy bear of his childhood that he turned into a star, made up like Marlene Dietrich and wearing conical breasts long before he made Madonna do it… Later, when he became a full-fledged designer, his habit was to shake things up a little (or a lot) in the established order of the fashion world, to magnify common objects against a provocative background: he presented women with more than the usual curves, old people as touching as young lovers, a janitor turned into a goddess, meanies dressed as softies… His women wore suits, so why couldn’t his men wear skirts? And that’s exactly what he did in 1984 with his collection entitled “And God Created Man.” Many have called him the most provocative designer around, but that didn’t stop him. Indeed, it encouraged him to continue adding the right dose of impertinence, just enough to keep his detractors on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and give him the necessary boost to forge ahead. To move towards success without ever faltering. He was hired at 18 by Pierre Cardin without any formal fashion education but on the widely distributed strength of his famous Folies Bergères drawings. He also learned the lingo and the ropes of haute couture by working for Jacques Estérel and Jean Patou before returning to Cardin, who sent him to Manila to create a line specifically designed for the United States. Gaultier the Iconoclast could never stay put. At age 24, he presented his first eponymous collection at the Palais de la Découverte in Paris. It was an entire collection made of placemats… An appetizing beginning that left everyone cold. But his gamble paid off and the Japanese giant Kashiyama offered to become his commercial partner. This gave Gaultier the chance to do what he really wanted, which was to show radically different collections twice a year. From his “high-tech” collection made of recycled tins and garbage cans and the “Dada” phase with its haphazard, free-falling volumes to his “Homme objet” collection with bare-back styles in the summer of 1984, Gaultier played with the codes and rites of garments, rejuvenating them along the way. And through his creations, he has made a point of banishing taboos, prejudice, and segregation. He’s always mixed couture techniques with street savvy in his ready-to-wear collections. He has always shaken up ingrained habits and snubbed tradition when it got in the way of modernity. To whit: on January 19, 1997, at a time when venerable Paris Haute Couture houses were going out of business one by one, he embarked on the Haute Couture adventure. His invitation said simply: “I believe in it, so I’m taking the plunge!” While Yves Saint Laurent was and will always be the epitome of couturier, Gaultier is definitely taking his place as the one true successor. His collections are vast idea laboratories and not one of his winter collections doesn’t include fur. This season, he is showing shearling jackets with topstitched detailing that accentuates the cocoon-style silhouettes. Wearing smart fox hats, his women play with transformable garments and wear life jackets in Scanbrown Saga mink. They swing the pleats of their coats and their kilts in Mahogany mink with inserts of black jersey triangles. They cuddle up in bathrobe-style coats made of fine strips of sheared mink in natural brown, bordeaux, ivory, black and copper assembled with such minutiae that they could be mistaken for pyjama stripes on a velvet ground. In other words, exquisite hand-crafting to bring to life the wild imaginings of the most turbulent designers of all!