Jean Paul Gaultier Looks Back at His Life in Parties
The French designer became a fashion icon thanks to his transgressive designs—and his love of a good time.
Jean Paul Gaultier retired as the creative director of his storied house in 2020 because he felt there were no boundaries left to push. “Fashion was interesting when I could break rules—that was my purpose,” he says. “But at a certain age, what rules do you break?” While Gaultier’s rise in the 1970s and ’80s shocked the stuffy French establishment, today the fashion world has largely remade itself in his image. Long before street casting and inclusivity became industry buzzwords, Gaultier, who is now 73, authentically incorporated those practices into his brand. He turned his back on the traditional Parisian view of haute couture and instead found inspiration in London’s subcultures and nightlife. “They were a lot more permissive and free than in Paris,” he says. “You were judged in Paris—you had to be like everyone else.” Despite his enfant terrible reputation, Gaultier says he actually wasn’t partying all the time. “In reality, I was working, because my work was a continuation of my dream.” Gaultier has remained involved with his label, sitting front row at its couture shows, which have been overseen by a rotating cast of designers, from Haider Ackermann to Ludovic de Saint Sernin. Until now. This month, the house announced that Duran Lantink has been named the first permanent creative director to succeed Gaultier. (“I see in him the energy, audacity and playful spirit through fashion that I had at the beginning of my own journey: the new enfant terrible of fashion,” Gaultier said of Lantink in a statement.) Still, Gaultier’s creative energy is unstoppable. “I always love to create,” Gaultier says. “I have the same dreams and play the same games as I did when I was a child.”
Film was Gaultier’s introduction to the fantasy of fashion. Growing up, he saw Falbalas, a 1945 French drama about a fashion designer who romances his best friend’s fiancée. Gaultier was more entranced by the sewing than by the seduction. “I want to be like the couturier,” he remembers thinking. By age 5, Gaultier, seen above in Paris’s Jardin du Luxembourg, had already begun to develop his personal style. “I liked to be in short trousers at that time.”
Gaultier, an only child, was raised in Cachan, a suburb of Paris. As a kid, he contracted typhoid fever. While he was recovering, his maternal grandmother (above) spent time with him. He named his childhood teddy bear Nana after her. “My grandmother let me do whatever I wanted, even dress my teddy bear as a woman with a conic bra,” says Gaultier. “That was the beginning. My grandmother let me be free of everything.”
“Inspiration, for me, is something free,” says Gaultier. While working as an assistant at Jean Patou in 1972, he had to make a gown that hid a model’s curves. “It was the old silhouette. Why not show that she has breasts? The girl is beautiful. To change her morphology—I find that scandalous.” Above: Gaultier is captured in a painted photograph by his friends and frequent collaborators Pierre Commoy and Gilles Blanchard, known as Pierre et Gilles.
Gaultier with his late boyfriend and business partner, Francis Menuge (left).
Gaultier never received a formal fashion education. “I learned through reading and looking at magazines,” he says. He also devoted much of his time to sketching. “I read that Pierre Cardin was doing 300 looks for his next show, so I tried to sketch 400.” After he sent his sketches to numerous fashion houses, Cardin hired him as an assistant in 1970. Six years later, Gaultier set out on his own. Above: He’s pictured (center) with his late boyfriend and business partner, Francis Menuge (left). The bag Menuge is holding inspired a dress. “I opened the sides so you could put your arms through it,” says Gaultier. When starting a brand, “you take what you have and make it something else.”
Initially, Gaultier’s peers didn’t embrace his vision. “They didn’t try to be accepting, to be honest,” he says. “I was intrigued by people around me who were different. They dressed differently, their attitude was different, and the music was different. The couturiers at the time, apart from Yves Saint Laurent, were quite old, and they were more into business than creativity. They were too much like, ‘We have to do that! That is very elegant! That is very chic!’ I hated that.”
Gaultier, pictured dancing at Le Palace in 1986, often cast non-models for his runway shows. “On the right is a German boy that I saw in a club. I said, ‘Oh, you can be a model if you are interested and you find it funny,’ ” remembers Gaultier. “I like people who have some attitude, some little look on their face. I like the ones who have personality.”
Gaultier’s shows would come to exceed the fantasy of Falbalas, featuring celebrity guest models (including Björk and Beth Ditto) and theatrical conceits (such as a mock beauty pageant with Rossy de Palma as the judge, for his spring 2015 show). However, his earliest outings adopted a pared-back, punk attitude out of necessity: “It wasn’t just to shock; it was because I had no money.” The label was on shaky financial footing in its early years, even as his provocative offerings garnered him quite a bit of press. Above: A look from his 1979 runway show.
Thierry Mugler and Edwige Belmor with Gaultier.
“I always loved the work of Thierry Mugler,” says Gaultier of his fellow designer (left). “His style was his own—he had his own identity. I was never jealous of the other couturiers. What I was doing was completely different.” Mugler and Gaultier did share a muse: Edwige Belmore (center), a Parisian nightlife icon who worked the door at the famed Parisian clubs Le Palace and Les Bains Douches. “She was the queen of punk—so impressive, so different.”
Gaultier, dressed as Princess Diana with Antoine de Caunes at the 1995 British Comedy Awards.
“I think the British have a good sense of self-criticism and humor,” says Gaultier, who found a second career in TV with his show Eurotrash, on Britain’s Channel 4. He attended the 1995 British Comedy Awards dressed as Princess Diana, alongside his cohost, Antoine de Caunes, who was Prince Charles. At the time, there was endless gossip about the royal couple, who were separated and heading for divorce.
Eurotrash, which Gaultier cohosted from 1993 to 1996, featured interviews with icons like Naomi Campbell and Kylie Minogue; reported segments, including one on a German home-cleaning service that employed men in thongs; and dispatches from nightlife characters such as the drag queen Lily Savage. The program mostly poked fun at continental Europe for British viewers, but it also served as a televised haven for camp and queer sensibilities. “It was truly a very good moment for me,” he says. “I had lost my partner [Menuge died of AIDS-related causes in 1990], so to do that helped me have my head somewhere else.”
Gaultier with Lady Bunny
“New York is very special—a very beautiful city, and always exciting,” says Gaultier. He visited often in the ’90s and once spent a night out with drag icon Lady Bunny. “People are always speaking about the parties in Paris, but in New York there are even more. The drag in New York is always incredible.”
In the 1990s, even though he had a hit perfume line, a cadre of loyal celebrity clients, and an adoring press, Gaultier didn’t stop pushing the limits of his designs. Above, from left: Christy Turlington models a look from his spring 1993 ready-to-wear collection, and a model walks in his “Cyber” collection from fall 1995. Gaultier’s colorful mesh shirts, op art bodysuits, and distinctive minidresses still make an impact in nightclubs today. “For me, it’s a compliment,” says Gaultier. “Often, what is in fashion now is dead tomorrow. To see that there are people discovering it again is like proof of love for what I did.”
Gaultier with Pedro Almodóvar and actor Victoria Abril.
Throughout his career, Gaultier has collaborated with filmmakers. He’s designed costumes for films by Peter Greenaway (The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover), Luc Besson (The Fifth Element), and Pedro Almodóvar (Kika and Bad Education). “To work with Almodóvar was like playing a game together,” he says. “It was absolutely fabulous. I have been a fan of his movies since the beginning.”
Gaultier with Madonna at his spring 1995 show
Though he’d previously watched Madonna perform on television, Gaultier can’t forget seeing her at the very first MTV Video Music Awards, in 1984. He was in the audience, and she was onstage in a wedding dress, debuting “Like a Virgin.” “The fans were shouting hysterically. We were shocked, and she was fabulous,” says Gaultier. The Queen of Pop had already worn his clothes on the red carpet, but their first true collaboration came when Gaultier designed her costumes for the 1990 Blond Ambition World Tour. To this day, Gaultier is the only designer to have persuaded Madonna to walk the runway—not once, but twice. In 1992, she wore a breast-baring ensemble; for his spring 1995 show (above), she was pushing a baby carriage.
Madonna on the Blond Ambition tour
The cone bra from the Blond Ambition world tour remains their most famous look. “It’s like something of war. It’s not a submissive woman; it’s a warrior,” he says.
For the launch of his 1993 collaboration with the champagne house Piper-Heidsieck, Gaultier went all out. Waiters were dressed in his signature marinière striped shirts, which Gaultier always made sexy. At the bash, “I was in la marinière too, but not a T-shirt—it was the underwear.”
Gaultier has a very personal take on menswear. “This is a Levi’s jacket. I love Levi’s because when it gets older, it becomes even more beautiful. I think we should also see life like that,” he says. “And the kilt, of course! I always play with masculinity and femininity. I called my first men’s collection ‘L’Homme-Objet,’ because women have always been objectified. Why shouldn’t a man be an object too?”
Gaultier with Babeth Djian, Tanel Bedrossiantz, and Dominique Emschwiller
Gaultier attends a party at Les Bains Douches in the 1990s with some of his biggest supporters: (from left) the fashion editor Babeth Djian; Tanel Bedrossiantz, his frequent muse and runway model; and Dominique Emschwiller, the president of his label’s board of supervisors. Before assuming that role, Emschwiller was the manager of the Parisian boutique Bus Stop and helped a young Gaultier during his early years, connecting him with the Japanese company Kashiyama when he needed funding to put on his fashion shows.
In 1987, Gaultier—who had bleached hair at the time—hosted a look-alike contest at New York’s Palladium nightclub. His own appearance among the peroxide blond revelers went largely unnoticed. “I think that people didn’t realize it was me,” he says. The winner was invited to walk in his next show in Paris. “I didn’t vote,” he says, but he thought the winner was the least convincing Gaultier of the bunch. “To look exactly like someone else takes a lot of work.”
Gaultier’s 50th anniversary haute couture collection was presented in January 2020, in his final runway show. Featuring more than 200 looks and staged at Paris’s Théâtre du Châtelet, the show included generations of supermodels (from Hannelore Knuts to Bella Hadid), celebrities (Paris Jackson and Dita Von Teese), nightlife icons (the artist Pandemonia and French DJ Kiddy Smile), and Gaultier’s closest associates. “Honestly, it was the best party. Everybody asks me, ‘Oh, you didn’t cry?’ No, because I was happy,” says Gaultier. “What is fashion? Evolving. It’s evolving all the time, which is fabulous, but at some point you have to stop.”
