Gaultier Redux

The Jean-Paul Gaultier exhibition tour rolls on, having made its way from its starting point in Montreal to cities in the USA and Europe, and now London’s Barbican will be playing host to The Fashion World of Jean-Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk from 9th April.  Unfortunately I won’t be in London for the opening of the exhibition as I’ll be in Sydney/Tokyo but thankfully, a pre-exhibition taster came to me in the form of a curated selection of over a hundred Jean Paul Gaultier vintage pieces available at MatchesFashion.Com‘s Marylebone store and online (from tomorrow onwards), in partnership with Cameron Silver and his formidable Decades archive.  Gaultier quite rightly said of his exhibition: “I didn’t want the show to be something like a funeral, because for me, to be in a museum, it is for people who are dead.  I am still alive!”  It’s all very well seeing iconic pieces of Gaultier on mannequins but it’s on the rails where his language can still make its relevance be known.  “Gaultier has had this very clear DNA – you can immediately see what he stands for,” said Silver, as he showed me around the installation at the Matches store, wearing a Gaultier couture green velvet robe.  “Obviously there’s the corsetry and the trench coat.  He’s famous for variations on the tuxedo, he’s done lots with tropical prints, the masculine/feminine thing , the exposed zippers, the see-through meshwork.  It’s hard to just zone in on one specific thing.”

Without meaning to sound like a collective broken record, the sad thing is of course that Jean Paul Gaultier’s current collections are a mere hammy jammy echo of the strokes of brilliance seen in the 1980s and 90s.  It kind of hurts to see critics freely laying into Gaultier with their cruel-to-be-kind jibes (and in one instance concerning Tim Blanks, Gaultier’s open letter as a retort is truly heartbreaking).   At the shows, you cross your fingers that Gaultier will triumph and show them young ones how it’s done, but all the while your brain oscillates between thinking “Is it so bad it’s good?” and “Who would actually wear this?!”  Silver concurs.  “Gaultier is in some way an unappreciated designer of the 80s and 90s.  It’s difficult to find the ready to wear in stores today.  To be perfectly honest, it is a broken brand and it makes me sad.  You’ve got this travelling exhibition where over a million people have seen it and they should be having this epic renaissance.  When you ask what Gaultier looks like today, nobody knows.”

The real truth is in the resulting garments though.  I’ve had mini Gaultier epiphanies when I’ve seen the ready to wear at remaining stockists like Opening Ceremony, and thought to myself how great the pieces look.  Likewise I’m eyeing up a pair of asymmetric trousers at Layers from AW13.  They’re a world and away from the spectacles of pastiche we get at the shows.  And of course, at MatchesFashion.com where Silver has gathered his pick of Gaultier pieces, spanning from 1985 through to 2008 (according to Silver anything from 2010 can be considered vintage these days), every piece resonates, with the ability to stand up to contemporary fashion.  In fact, the mannequins dotted throughout the store and in the windows don’t scream “vintage” despite being dressed head to toe in vintage Gaultier.  That pervasive criticism of Gaultier’s recent shows being “dated”, is hardly evident here.  A clear latex trenchcoat edged with black – aren’t raincoat new kids on the block Wanda Nylon making this garment their own?  A nude mesh body embroidered to look like tattoo art – didn’t Marios Schwab do something similar a few years ago?  Kilts and pinstripe suiting?  They’ve become staples of the likes of J.W. Anderson and Christopher Kane in recent seasons.  As Lynn and Horst’s clever blog points out in his Gaultier Questions series, time and time again, Gaultier’s influence consciously or unconsciously rears its innovative and bold head.

As Silver excitedly shows me piece after piece on the rails, there’s a fervour that comes from a genuine place.  Silver’s way into collecting Gaultier, wasn’t just for the purpose of amplifying the archives at Decades, but was part of his formative fashion education.  “My first fashion piece when I was in high school as a Gaultier piece.  It had that street sensibility and it had that counter cultural thing.  And he had Gaultier Junior as well – also, clothes were a lot cheaper then!”

A note on Silver’s future projects – he mentioned a huge Biba project that he is working on.  “We’ve got over 500 original pieces that will be showcased during fashion week.  It’s terrifically on time – when you look at Valentino and what Nicolas (Ghesquiere) did at Vuitton – it definitely has resonance.”

One last bit of Silver wisdom?  “I’m always on the look out for new talent – neo-vintage as I like to call it.  My whole thing is that we curate our closets.  When you treat fashion as though they’re future collectibles, you buy less mistakes.”  I certainly need no encouragement in that department.

Back to Gaultier though, a shallow dig into archive shows and campaign imagery gave me a teensy glitchy glimpse into the way Gaultier electrified the fashion world and beyond.  His world wasn’t locked up in a rarified ivory tower.  He was a young designer experimenting and provoking, pushing the closeted confines of fashion into a wider public consciousness and confronting diversity head on before it became an act of tokenism.  The touring exhibition has and will continue to emphasise Gaultier’s landmark achievements but looking to the past only serves to make you wonder how that level of innovation and button-pushing could resurge in the future at maison Jean Paul Gaultier.

Images from 90s Runway, Fashion Art Daily, Le Modalogue, Warhol @ Christies