Sacai’s Chitose Abe is known for her genius for grafting two different garments together to create a sui generis ensemble, so the idea of grafting her sensibility onto that of Jean Paul Gaultier—a designer that she has long admired—seemed like the basis for an exciting collaboration. It was one that Gaultier himself suggested as part of his elegant disruption strategy following his “retirement” from the conventional fashion system.
“It was a very intimate, more friendly proposal,” recalled Abe backstage before the unveiling of her Gaultier takeover, “an invitation to come over for tea. It didn’t feel like two companies coming together, but instead like two people.”
Haute couture wasn’t something that Sacai had necessarily thought about before, but she acknowledged that it was “a really spectacular experience. The level of perfection is something that Jean Paul and I share,” she explained, “and it made the process so smooth.” Her couture touches included the hidden luxury of dozens of tiny ruffled flounces buoying up the inside of a skirt, and the stripes of Gaultier’s iconic blue and white matelot sweater worked with insertions of satin organza, or seeming to evaporate into wisps of chiffon.
Abe knows Gaultier’s work so well that she admitted she didn’t even have to consult the archives. “I didn’t want to take the archives too literally,” she added, “but to make it Sacai and very, very up to date.” So for look number one, Gaultier’s iconic fall 1984 conical bra emerged from a deconstructed man’s navy pinstripe suit reimagined as a corset and overskirt, and worn over the tattoo print mesh second-skin pieces that reappeared throughout the collection and represented a collaboration with the tattoo artist Dr. Woo. (There was also a shoe collaboration with Pierre Hardy, who produced the amazing thigh-high boots echoing themes drawn from Gaultier’s fall 1994 Mongolian inspired collection—the fur this time around is faux—or riffing on old fashioned pink corsetry, or utilitarian denim or khaki clothing).
It helps, of course, that there are some shared codes between Gaultier and Abe (an alum of Rei Kawakubo and Junya Watanabe’s studios) that she worked into the collection like a love for tartan, a refined take on punk, the co-opting of traditional men’s suiting fabrics, and the reimagining of the trench coat and Aran sweater. That tartan was redone as a sophisticated assemblage of chiffon pieces worked into a fluttering dress, and those pinstripes were reinvented as a high waisted dress crafted as though it was made from an enormous pair of trousers, the abundance of fabric pleated into fullness. The trench coat was re-conceived as a skirt with the volumes of an Elizabethan farthingale, and samples of different ivory Aran knits were patched onto a chiffon dress. On close inspection, the military braid turned out to have been embroidered from safety pins.
Abe also looked to the glory years of the Paris couture for silhouette inspiration, which were a point of reference for Gaultier throughout his career. Among her callbacks was a reinvention of the double puffball of Cristobal Balenciaga, which she ingeniously evoked in tiers of what appeared to be repurposed khaki nylon bomber jackets.
Shown at a stately pace in a dramatically lit Alex de Betak presentation rather than on Gaultier’s traditional raised runway and with his raucous spirit, the collection unfurled as a fascinating exercise in creative complicity and shared values. Gaultier joined Abe for the finale runway walk and delighted the crowds on the street outside when he joined her on the balcony of his imposing Belle Epoque HQ with the models crowding the windows around them. Sacai wore a t-shirt embroidered with a message that was used throughout the collection: Enfants Terribles.
