When Jean-Paul Gaultier walks away from fashion
design, he will leave behind a rich legacy of men in skirts, Madonna in a
conical bra and lots of sailor stripes.
The famous French fashion designer said he will be bowing out Wednesday
with a big party to mark his 50 years in the business after his final haute
couture collection hits the catwalk.
AFP looks back at Gaultier’s signature style.
Signature sailor boy & girl outfits
Gaultier has been inspired by the clothes of his youth. The sailor’s
stripes were turned into a unisex staple, adoring everything from T-shirts to
long gowns.
The French artists known as Pierre et Gilles immortalised Gaultier in his
signature blue and white stripes with a bouquet of flowers in his hand. His
fragrance for men “Le Male”, which came out in 1995, has a bottle with both
the form and the colours of his idealised sailor boy.
No room for gender-biased in Gaultier designs
A slayer of gender-based clothing traditions, Gaultier caused a sensation
in 1984 when he included skirts in his collection “And God created Man”.
For him, “a man doesn’t wear his masculinity on his clothes. His virility
is in his head.”
He has used different fabrics to unpick the codes of masculine and feminine
couture. The tartan of a Scottish kilt would also be used, playfully inviting
us all to join in breaking down the boundaries.
Iconic Madonna cone bra
One of his grandmother’s old corsets fascinated Gaultier as a child. He
went on to buy such restrictive undergarments in second-hand shops and
decorate them with military crosses.
When music star and fashion icon Madonna asked him to create her wardrobe
for her 1990 “Blond Ambition” tour, one of the pieces he created for her was a
pink corset with a conical bustier, which swiftly became the most famous piece
of clothing in pop history.
Embracing diversity in models
Gaultier has embraced diversity and finds beauty everywhere. In the 1980s
he ran a small ad in the French Liberation daily seeking “Atypical models. The
facially disfigured should not refrain from applying.
Breaking with the traditional tenets of beauty for fashion models, he sent
overweight, elderly and non-white models down his runways.
It was Gaultier who launched the career of Farida Khelfa, the first
prominent model of North African origin, as well as the generously proportioned
American singer Beth Ditto and the bearded Austrian singer-drag queen Conchita
Wurst.
Costume design in cinema
Gaultier’s inventiveness was not restricted to fashion shows. His designs
made their way to stage and screen.
He had a winning partnership with Spanish film director Pedro Almodovar,
working on his films “Kika and “The City of Lost Children”.
He also created designs for French director Luc Besson’s 1997 sci-fi action
film “The Fifth Element”.
In that film, which has become a classic of French cinema, he dressed
Ukrainian-born actress Milla Jovovitch with a minimalist jumpsuit, made of
just a few strips of white fabric. Her orange hair in the film is echoed in
the outfits of co-star Bruce Willis and the uniforms of McDonald’s employees.(AFP)
