The realities of the world are shadowing the conscience of the haute couture. See John Galliano’s powerful (and brilliant) meditation on our era of protest and plurality for Maison Margiela’s Artisanal collection, and the razor-sharp depiction of the intersection of fashion and sociology from the Vetements gang, even if the label’s only relation to the week is that it presents its ready-to-wear during this time slot. But sometimes couture just needs to be couture. So step forward Jean Paul Gaultier, flying a fierce, flowery, ’40s-tinged flag for fashion’s most elevated form of expression.
To underscore that fact, he also gave us that time-honored means of watching the couture—a run of show, listing everything shown, in order, with each outfit named. (All that was missing was the sonorous voice-over reading out the notes, but in his time, Gaultier has had that, too.) What I always want to know is, a bit like the chicken and the egg, which comes first—the name or the notion of what the look should be? Gaultier had some fun with this one. Consider Mad in Normandie, a navy blazer and long skirt cut like a pair of pants, typical of his exemplary, effortless way with tailoring. Or Jetlag, which was a shimmering daisy-strewn pantsuit with a matching shirt. Or how about, my personal favorite here, Beach Better Have My Monoi—a long marine blue crepe evening dress embellished with silver chain threading (that’d be the $$$ part, I guess) and a trailing pink foulard.
Jokes—Gaultier’s got a million of them. And he also has, which has oftentimes been the hallmark of his haute offerings, a campy, ironic, playful sense of humor deployed to counteract the seriousness of the genre he’s working in. Of course, what only ends up happening is that he amplifies the level of workmanship by playing it for laughs. This collection worked around a big-shouldered, slim-hipped, super-draped silhouette and then splashed and swirled it with florals and paysanne flourishes—a primer in classic Jean Paul Gaultier. It also contained elements that have been popping up in the collections of Paris’s new guard of late—reconstructed Perfectos, jackets that start wide and fall to an abrupt finish at the waist, supersize-me shoulders, asymmetrical sharp-edged evening. Happily, those designers are twisting them in ways that are unique and true to them, making them new, new, new, and working in the very same spirit as of one of the city’s true originals.
