Who is more relevant than Jean Paul Gaultier when talking about fashion today? No one, in any case, can boast of having known so many eras. He worked for monuments of couture – Pierre Cardin, Jean Patou -, witnessed the liberation of women’s wardrobe and the advent of ready-to-wear. He founded his brand to shake up the strict world of French luxury in the 1970s, and question the fantasy of Parisian chic. Like Claude Montana and Thierry Mugler, he lived through the excitement of the 1980s but knew how to reinvent himself so as not to remain the symbol of a past aesthetic.
While shaking up fashion with innovative ideas (men’s skirts, mixed wardrobes, tattoos on the catwalks, etc.), Jean Paul Gaultier launched into haute couture and, between 2004 and 2010, took over as artistic director of the most sober and luxurious of French houses, Hermès. He also imagined fragrances: these now ensure the sustainability of his fashion brand, which, like the perfume license, belongs to the Spanish group Puig.
Officially, Jean Paul Gaultier retired in January 2020, at the right time, just before the Covid-19 crisis. In reality, he is still very active, involved in the fight against AIDS and ambassador of Sidaction, the next edition of which will take place from March 22 to 24; he keeps an eye on the fashion sector and stays somewhat in business since, for each haute couture collection of the brand that bears his name, he invites a designer of his choice to reinterpret his archives.
After Olivier Rousteing, Julien Dossena or Chitose Abe, and before Nicolas Di Felice for the June collection, he asked Irishwoman Simone Rocha to take up the challenge for the parade which was held in January. It is precisely in the haute couture salons of the Parisian headquarters, at 325, rue Saint-Martin, in 3e borough, that we met Jean Paul Gaultier, among Simone Rocha’s dresses, composed of pointed breasts and covered with laces like corsets or stripes evoking the sailor top dear to the 71-year-old designer.
We are here surrounded by the creations of Simone Rocha. How do you perceive them?
It’s moving to see my codes reinterpreted, especially in a place where I worked. I feel like I’m looking at my work from another planet. Simone Rocha is more romantic than me, but we share a certain taste for the offbeat. It’s his British side. The French always have this thing of saying “that’s chic, that’s not”, of wanting to define good taste. I wouldn’t say that I suffered from it, but still…
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