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goodbyes
September 26, 2014

Paris Is Losing Its Greatest Ready-to-Wear Showman

By Véronique Hyland

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Jean Paul Gaultier’s final ready-to-wear show takes place tomorrow at Le Grand Rex, a cinema in Paris’s second arrondissement. The designer has been showing in Paris for 38 years, and while he’ll continue to pursue couture, fragrance, and other projects, this is his last bow in the RTW arena. And with that, the city is losing one of the biggest highlights of the biannual ready-to-wear shows. 

Gaultier’s memorable runway moments have been legion. He once “levitated” Virginie Mouzat, then the fashion correspondent for Le Figaro, at his spring 2007 magic-themed show. Jourdan Dunn, who was pregnant at the time of his spring 2010 show, sported Gaultier’s signature cone bra and a mini-shield over her belly. For his fall 2003 show, the designer found a creative way to deal with PETA protesters: Wrap them in fur coats and send them on their way. Even his show titles are memorable: The Concierge Is in the Staircase. The Existentialists. Chic Rabbis. Pain Couture. He’s used Andreja Pejic, Björk, Beth Ditto, Amanda Lepore, Dita Von Teese, Hamish Bowles, Velvet D’Amour, and, most recently, Eurovision Song Contest winner Conchita Wurst in his stable of nontraditional models on his couture and ready-to-wear runways. (Not to mention Madonna, in breast-exposing suspenders in 1992.)

Even for fall 2007, he got then-newcomer Coco Rocha to open the show with a jig — a moment that helped launch the model’s career. “He asked me to Irish dance down his runway to Scottish Highland bagpipes,” Rocha recalls. “It was a little-known skill I had at the time, but Vogue later dubbed it the ‘Coco Moment’ and from then on I was forever known as Coco, the Irish dancing model.” He later brought Rocha back on for two more stunts: a staged catfight with another model in 2009 — “She was secretly pregnant at the time, so I went easy on her, and most of the fight was her yanking me around by my hair,” Rocha remembers. And in spring 2013, Rocha dressed up as John Travolta in Grease. “We worked on a dance number that left me with bruised knees for months. As always, it was more than worth it.”

Everyone who walked in a Gaultier show knew that they were participating in a historic event. “One of my favorite moments of my career was ending his show in a dress he made just for me,” says Crystal Renn. “He was sewing the flowers directly on my body during the fitting, and I remember secretly pinching myself.”

Now every show has an Instagram-ready moment — some sort of visual gimmick or performance to get everyone’s iPhones snapping — but Gaultier, along with Alexander McQueen and Hussein Chalayan, pioneered this kind of runway theatre in a still-analog age. And the fashion didn’t get lost in the pageantry. Speaking to L’Express, former French Marie Claire editor-in-chief Catherine Lardeur said, “He was perceived as an eccentric, but very quickly I came to consider him a classicist, with a perfect command of cuts and volumes.”

His anything-goes défilés were more like happenings — with an inclusive spirit that celebrated people of every size and color and stripe in a world that too often prides itself on exclusion. Click through our slideshow for highlights of Gaultier’s shows throughout the years.

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1 / 26 Photos
Spring 2011 RTW Beth Ditto Photo: 2010 Getty Images
Spring 1998 RTW Naomi Campbell Photo: WWD/Cond�� Nast/Corbis
Fall 1994 RTW Kate Moss Photo: �� Corbis. All Rights Reserved.
Spring 2014  Coco Rocha dances onstage during Gaultier's Grease-themed runway show. Photo: 2013 Getty Images
Spring 2010 RTW Jourdan Dunn Photo: 2009 AFP
1997 Carla Bruni wearing Jean Paul Gaultier's spring 1997 fringe bikini. Photo: 2007 Catwalking
Fall 1994  Björk modeling the Great Journey collection. Photo: Jean Paul Gaultier
1993 Madonna at the Jean Paul Gaultier runway show benefit for APLA in L.A. Photo: Vinnie Zuffante/Getty Images
1989 Grace Jones at the International Rock Awards, wearing the Gaultier 1989 Spring RTW: Around the World in 168 Outfits collection. Photo: Dave... 1989 Grace Jones at the International Rock Awards, wearing the Gaultier 1989 Spring RTW: Around the World in 168 Outfits collection. Photo: Dave Hogan/Getty Images
Fall 2011 Menswear Andrej Pejic Photo: 2011 Victor Boyko
Spring 1997 RTW Helena Christensen Photo: Photo B.D.V./Corbis
1993 Jean Paul Gaultier on the runway. Photo: Foc Kan/Getty Images
Spring 1992 RTW  Photo: Julio Donoso/Corbis
Fall 1987 RTW  Photo: Pierre Vauthey/Corbis
Spring 1994 RTW Inès de la Fressange models the Return of Prints collection. Photo: Jean Paul Gaultier
Spring 1998 RTW Nadja Auermann Photo: Gareth Watkins/Reuters/Corbis
1989 RTW Boy George on the catwalk. Photo: Laszlo Veres/Corbis
Fall 1986 RTW The Constructivist collection. Photo: Jean Paul Gaultier
Fall 1982 RTW  Photo: Jean Paul Gaultier
Spring 1988 RTW The Concierge Is in the Staircase collection. Photo: Jean Paul Gaultier
Spring 1998 RTW  Photo: WWD/Cond�� Nast/Corbis
Fall 1990 RTW  Photo: Pierre Vauthey/Corbis
Spring 1998 RTW  Photo: WWD/Cond�� Nast/Corbis
Fall 1991 RTW The French Cancan collection. Photo: Jean Paul Gaultier
Spring 1998 RTW  Photo: Stephane Cardinale/Corbis
Spring 2006 Crystal Renn in a flowered dress.  Photo: Copyright (c) 2005 Rex USA. No use without permission.
1 / 26

Tags:

  • goodbyes
  • jean paul gaultier
  • coco rocha
  • pfw spring 2015

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