After a 50-year career and staggering final presentation in Paris, Jean Paul Gaultier knows the show must go on. The beloved French designer announced his retirement in February but he had yet to name a successor to his vast empire until now. Earlier this week, Gaultier announced that Chitose Abe, the designer behind Japanese label Sacai, will create the label’s next couture collection.
Abe won’t take over the company permanently, though — she will essentially kick off a new brand initiative as it experiments with hiring different designers each season to oversee the collection. For a designer as revered and anomalous as JPG, this is an intriguing, though not entirely new, concept. (Remember when Hood By Air’s Shayne Oliver designed a Helmut Lang collection as its ‘designer in residence’ in 2017? Same thing.) Plenty of brands have invited guest designers to lend their talents for one collection, but Gaultier’s decision to adopt this as an ongoing strategy essentially allows the label to persevere at the hands of the very designers it inspired. It’s kind of genius, but then again, when isn’t he?
“I am pleased that this concept will become reality now with Chitose Abe of Sacai as the first guest designer. I admire her work, we have many things in common creatively and a similar vision of fashion. I am glad to give her the complete freedom,” Gaultier said in a statement to WWD.
Chitose Abe will present her Jean Paul Gaultier collection in July
Well, this is a bummer. Jean Paul Gaultier, one of the most influential French couture designers ever, announced his retirement today on Twitter. His upcoming Fall/Winter 2020 show in Paris on January 22 will be his last.
“This show celebrating 50 years of my career will also be my last,” he said. “But rest assured Haute Couture will continue with a new concept.”
Gaultier has had a tremendous impact on the global fashion community and pop culture. He launched his namesake line in 1976 and was one of the first to blur the lines of luxury and streetwear — a master of trickle-up theory. His 1985 show featured a line of men’s kilts, long before the public was even talking about gender fluidity and challenging masculinity and all that. (A lifelong punk, he could often be seen sporting his own kilt.) His Spring/Summer 1990 collection is frequently cited as one of the most influential menswear shows of all time and was referenced heavily in last year’s JPG x Supreme collab. And, before I start rambling, he invented Madonna’s cone bra. Need I say more?
While it definitely is the end of an era, the designer announced that his brand will continue under new leadership and he has some additional projects in store. Watch the full announcement below.
This show celebrating 50 years of my career will also be my last. But rest assured Haute Couture will continue with a new concept. pic.twitter.com/PJCC53K4tm
Supreme has really had a year. Just last month it released a collaborative collection with the great Haute-couturier Jean-Paul Gaultier. Then it resurrected its epochal box logo — this time coated in Swarovski crystals — for a special 25th-anniversary collection that sold out in approximately .25 seconds. And now the cult skate brand has unveiled its sunglasses collection for Spring/Summer ’19.
The limited range of eyewear consists of 3 distinct styles — the Orb, the Marvin, and the River — which reference certain eyewear trends without overkill. The Orb is an oversized frame that’s very Y2k-raver-slash-hacker. The Marvin boasts a more traditional round frame but elevated with a snakeskin-like material coating. The River is a thin and delicate frameless option (kinda like the ones Ryan Phillippe wore in Cruel Intentions) that I’m already worried about breaking. So there’s something for everyone.
The Supreme sunglasses are out in select stores and online tomorrow.
After Supreme announced its newest designer collaboration with the French couturier Jean-Paul Gaultier, the internet was thrown into another streetwear-goes-luxe frenzy. While the New York skate brand is no stranger to collaborations — I’m pretty sure its collaboration with Louis Vuitton two years ago is what reignited the fanny pack craze — this partnership seemed like a genuine pairing between two masterminds, and one that cements streetwear’s residence in the industry. Supreme remains a leading authority of streetwear, while Gaultier’s iconic work has permeated pop culture for over 30 years. (Who hasn’t seen one of his body-shaped perfume bottles or the Madonna cone bra? Supreme even cast Madonna’s daughter Lourdes in the campaign as a tribute to the designer’s muse.) When the collection officially drops tomorrow, it’s sure to sell out before the page even loads. We take a closer look at some of the inspiration behind the latest Supreme collab.
The ‘Fight Racism’ Collection
Neither brand is stranger to making a statement and both adopted a punk ‘fuck authority’ mindset in both their careers, so it seemed a natural instinct to integrate Gaultier’s signature bold collage print from his ‘Fight Racism’ collection of the ’90s.
Jean-Paul Gaultier S/S ’90
While Gaultier had frequently blurred gender lines in his presentations, this was one of the collections that were able to subvert the business suit. By contrasting the utilitarian style of the silhouette with cargo pockets and industrial belt buckles, it was one of the first collections to combine formal wear with sport and workwear.
Jean-Paul Gaultier S/S ’90
Another example of Gaultier doing it first with the utility vest. While it’s now taken the place of the side bag trend of yesteryear, it was another example of transforming the mundane into a fashionable accessory — Virgil Abloh showed similar pieces during his menswear debut for Louis Vuitton FW ’19.
Jean-Paul Gaultier SS ’01
Plaid and florals have frequently been used in many of Gaultier’s collections, but this darker and more subtle print seemed lifted directly from the designer’s Ss ’01 Couture show and incorporated into a casual pair of sweatpants. Now that’s how you do hi-lo fashion.
Supreme x Jean-Paul Gaultier drops in select stores and online (and on Grailed) tomorrow.
You would not expect the man responsible for painting the world dramatic with his playful and glamorizingly sexual creations—such as Madonna’s cone-shaped corset made famous in her 1990 Blonde Ambition Tour or Milla Jovovich’s body-hugging “ace-bandage” body suit in The Fifth Element—to be anything less than loud. But when the 61-year-old couturier took the stage last night at New York’s Brooklyn Museum for the opening reception of his new retrospective The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk, it was his modesty that was noticeably second to his genius.
With his most recent muse, Coco Rocha, pressed firmly to his side, Gaultier said “I feel at home in Brooklyn,” telling that as a child he grew up in a suburb next to Paris, commuting back and forth between metropolitan and tranquility. “Brooklyn is not a suburb,” he said, “but it’s the same feeling.” And perhaps it was this intimately candid image of the larger-than-life designer in his childhood home, or maybe it was the crowd itself—packed full of life-long Gaultier supporters such as Bill Cunningham, Karli Kloss, Farida Khelfa, Fern Mallis, Amanda Lepore, Calvin Klein, Stefano Tonchi—roaring back with appreciation that encouraged a very authentic moment of fashion history. Traveling up the elevator to exhibit on the fifth floor of the museum this was impossible to overlook.
Like any retrospective, From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk begins with a timeline of the designer’s life: his birth in Arcueil, early assistant work at Pierre Cardin, Jacques Esterel, Jean Patou and then Pierre Cardin again, creation of his own fashion house and respective prêt-à-porter, menswear, and haute couture labels, creative direction at Hermès and the fabulous movie stars (Catherine Deneuve, Marion Cotillard, Victoria Abril), pop stars (Grace Jones, Davie Bowie, Beyoncé), and artists (Andy Warhol, David LaChappelle, Cindy Sherman) in between. Afterwards, in true excess, the exhibit spans out into several thematic sections, chronicling the complexities and theatrical style motifs in Gaultier’s body of work in a lavish 130-piece seven-course-meal. First is The Odyssey, a religiously sexualized array of dangerous mermaids, virgins, and sailors; moving into The Boudoir, a plush, tufted-wall room that strips away all aspects of the costume and showcases Gaultier’s famous eroticism; next is Muses a saloon that pays homage to the designer’s most famous inspirations with an Andrej Pejic mannequin wearing a hip-py Amy Winehouse Tribute S/S ’12 embroidered dress; to a graffiti tagged warehouse-style loft that houses Punk Cancan; to Skin Deep, a sultry red light district display of nudity and existential thought; to Metropolis’ house of mirrors and its cinematic looks; and finally Urban Jungle, a multiethnic—Bedouin, orthodox Jewish, Chinese, Flamenco, Russian, Bollywood, Nordic—assortment of combat-like fashions over the New York skyline.
Though clearly educational—the show is the most comprehensive look at Gaultier’s iconic work today—the most exciting aspect of the retrospective is its use of technology as means for experiential display. Inside the galleries, 32 of the mannequins come to life with interactive faces and speaking voices through the use of high-definition audiovisual projections and custom-made mannequins. A dozen celebrities, including Gaultier himself, model Ève Salvail, and bass player Melissa Auf der Maur, have lent their faces and voices to this project, allowing museum visitors to interact with these pieces as if they were speaking to the models straight off the runway. This breaks the sense of detachment that is often felt in most costume exhibitions (even in Gaultier’s earlier exhibit at The Metropolitan Museum Art) and retail environments, allowing us to experience the fashions on a more human level.
In an interview with Jeanne Beker, Gaultier once confessed, “making clothes is my way of communicating,” because he was always so shy. And, in many ways The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk feels just that: a long conversation with the designer that you never want to end.
The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk is on view at Brooklyn Museum from October 25, 2013 – February 23, 2014.
