Gaultier, Jean-Paul (1952-)

Dates

• Existence: 1952-

Biography

French fashion designer. Since his début collection, Gaultier has repeatedly been called the enfant terrible of French fashion for his rejection of conventional distinctions between male and female dress, his controversial historical and global references, and an ongoing ironic evocation of the Paris of popular imagination.

Gaultier credited his early interest in fashion to the influence of his grandmother, an amateur hypnotist and fortuneteller with a colorful group of clients for whom Gaultier imagined dramatic outfits and hairstyles. His grandmother’s foundation garments were particularly important and inspired an obsession with corsets that became a recurring motif in his design career.

As a teenager, he designed fashion collections for his mother and grandmother and sent sketches to Pierre Cardin. On his 18th birthday, Gaultier was offered a job by Cardin, where he stayed for about one year. He then moved on to a short stint with the avant-garde designer Jacques Esterel (1918–74). On 24 April 1971, his 19th birthday, he began working at the house of Jean Patou, where he spent two years as assistant to Michel Gomez, then to Angelo Tarlazzi. Gaultier then returned to Cardin and worked from 1974 to 1975 in Manila, assisting with the designer’s collections for the American market.

In 1976, after launching a line of electronic jewellery, Gaultier presented his first apparel collection under his own name at the Palais de la Découverte, Paris, consisting of woven straw dresses that resembled placemats. A lower-priced range, Junior Gaultier, was launched in 1988 and was replaced by the JPG by Gaultier line in 1994. Gaultier Jeans débuted in summer of 1992; the line is now known as Jean’s Paul Gaultier. His first haute couture collection was shown in January 1997. His first fragrance, Jean Paul Gaultier (now known as Jean Paul Gaultier Classique), introduced in 1993 in a bottle shaped like a female torso, included a ‘modern’ note of nail polish remover. Additional fragrances for women and men followed.

Since the 1980s, Gaultier has designed for an international group of performers including David Bowie, Tina Turner, Prince, the accordionist Yvette Horner, Sylvie Vartan and Kylie Minogue. His most famous costumes were the outfits he created for Madonna for her 1990 Blond Ambition tour, featuring bras with exaggerated cone-shaped cups (see fig.). He also outfitted Madonna for her 2001 Drowned World and 2006 Confessions tours. His film credits include costumes for Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover (1989), Pedro Almodovar’s Kika (1994), The City of Lost Children (1995) directed by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element (1997).

Gaultier’s collections reveal a wide range of influences, and a humorous, irreverent attitude toward fashion (see fig.). In a 1984 interview, he revealed that a tramp asleep on a Paris street wearing a sweater over a coat inspired a collection. Inspiration has also come from other unexpected sources. ‘Le dadaïsme’ (1983) included clothes that seemed to be falling off the models. ‘La Concierge est dans l’escalier’ (Spring/Summer 1988) fondly acknowledged the berets and polka-dotted scarves of a stereotypical Paris concierge. ‘Les Rabbins Chics’ (Autumn/Winter 1993–4) was inspired by the traditional clothing of Hasidic Jews. ‘Les Tatouages’ (Spring/Summer 1994) included flesh-colored pieces printed with tattoo-inspired designs. While many top mannequins have modeled Gaultier’s designs, they have often shared the runway with non-professionals recruited by the designer for their ethnic diversity or less-than-fashionable figures.

Androgyny has been a continuing theme for Gaultier. ‘Une garde-robe pour deux’, presented in 1985, offered each sex the opportunity to dress up in the other’s clothes (see fig.). Women paraded in black leather lingerie and tailored suits. Men posed as ‘hommes fatals’ in low-backed sweaters and hats with veils. ‘Et Dieu créa l’homme’, Gaultier’s 1985 Spring/Summer menswear collection introduced a notable item: the skirt for men. The first skirt was actually a pair of trousers with an extra panel of fabric across the front of both legs. His explanation of the skirt option for men is that the style is not cross-dressing but ‘a way to put fabric on the body’. Subsequent collections included variations in the form of kilts, sarongs, miniskirts over trousers, and tunics. Since ‘Adam et Eve Rastas d’aujourd’hui’ in 1991, Gaultier has on occasion shown men’s and women’s collections together. ‘Mongole’ (Autumn/Winter 1994–5) included particularly androgynous models in look-alike fashions inspired by Mongolian dress.

In addition to preparing his numerous collections for men and women, since 2004 Gaultier has been head designer for Hermès.

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