The terrible child of fashion, Jean Paul Gaultier, celebrated with great pomp his fifty years of career with a last haute-couture parade organized, Wednesday, January 22, at the prestigious Théâtre du Châtelet.
The man who has become one of the symbols of French luxury has invited his friends for this exceptional evening. The American pin-up Dita Von Teese, the Spanish actress Rossy de Palma and the French singer Mylène Farmer participated in this parade.
The 67-year-old French designer, who made his debut with Pierre Cardin in particular, is an essential figure in the world of couture, known for having shaken up dress codes in the 1980s to the point of being qualified as iconoclast.
He is notably the author of creations that have become cult, such as the bustier with conical cups worn by Madonna, or her famous sailor sweater and her sailor shirts, a memory of her grandmother "who dressed her in blue".
Here is Mylène Farmer's passage on the occasion of Jean-Paul Gaultier's last parade: class in its purest form.
👉🏼 Live the event live by clicking on the following link: https://t.co/8bXq7IraO0 #JeanPaulGaultier # MylèneFarmer pic.twitter.com/MPPVnBmqG7
"The terrible child of fashion"
In the 1980s, he placed an ad in the newspaper Liberation: "Non-conforming creator is looking for atypical models. Broken mouths do not abstain". He thus created the revolution by being one of the first to show senior models and overweight or tattooed women.
During Paris Fashion Week in July 2014, he invites to parade the bearded drag queen Conchita Wurst, Eurovision winner, as well as a pregnant woman in a wedding dress.
"From your first collection in 1976, you questioned the criteria of taste and bad taste. You shocked, disturbed and annoyed while having fun blurring the trail with an ambivalent and interchangeable wardrobe," said Pierre Cardin. in 2001 by giving him the Legion of Honor.
Son of an accountant, Jean Paul Gaultier grew up in Arcueil (Val-de-Marne), near Paris, and was introduced to sewing at a very young age by his grandmother, an esthetician. In 1984, when he created men's skirts, he defended his project, arguing that "a man does not wear his masculinity on his clothes, his manhood is in his head".
Considered in the past as "the terrible child of fashion", his name has become a showcase of French luxury, thanks in particular to his line of perfumes launched in 1991.
Jean Paul Gaultier, the last parade. "It's not death",
he told us all evening. And with what cheerfulness! pic.twitter.com/9XJov5AaGc
New look for Hermès
His arrival in 2003 at Hermès, until then the official temple of classic and discreet luxury, shakes up the fashion world. Jean-Paul Gaultier succeeds in giving it a serious facelift by bringing fantasy and freshness, while remaining within its codes. He sold his house to the Catalan group Puig in 2011 and stopped the ready-to-wear collections in 2015.
In 2018, he announced that he would give up fur, a "strong gesture", then hailed by associations for the protection of animals.
"You have to recycle the clothes, which I have done since my beginnings. In my first collection, I recycled old jeans, camouflage stuff, I cut them in all directions. I find that with the you can do the same thing, "said the man who told his story in a colorful magazine last year at the Folies Bergère.
With AFP
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