On Wednesday afternoon, in the offices of Jean Paul Gaultier on
rue
Saint Martin in Paris, one of those increasingly rare memorable moments on a catwalk was experienced.
From the outside and broadly speaking, the sensual and maximalist aesthetics of Olivier Rousteing at Balmain and the theatricality of Gaultier's visual archive have little to do with each other.
That's why at first it was hard to understand why he chose it for his third haute couture collaboration: the unstructured basics of the Japanese Chitose Abe (Sacai) were part of the designer's personal wardrobe;
and Glenn Martens, the Belgian in charge of Y Project and Diesel, trained for years under him.
But Rousteing?
At the end of the parade it became clear to the public that honest admiration is a powerful creative engine.
Rousteing read Gaultier's legacy in a completely personal way: the bottle of Le Male perfume that his father had in the bathroom, and that here took the form of boots and dresses;
the fascinating irreverence of Madonna in the early nineties (there were the corsets, but also that design with straps that left her bare chest) and, above all, the praise of the difference that Gaultier's extensive career has made.
As Rousteing pointed out to EL PAÍS shortly before the parade, "now we talk about racial diversity or non-binarism, but it was he who paved the way."
He himself learned through Gaultier when he was a teenager that there was nothing wrong with wearing makeup or traditionally feminine clothing.
Tattoo
by the French designer, a nod to Rousteing's own African roots.
A model wears a Jean Paul Gaultier haute couture creation, inspired by the Frenchman's Le Male perfume bottle, during the brand's fashion show in Paris on July 6, 2022. Michel Euler (AP)
They were followed by 44 women who reinvented Gaultier's broad language: corsets, fragrance bottles, bare busts,
deconstructed
denim , hearts and, of course, the mythical
mariniere
that Rousteing himself wore when he came out to say hello.
Gaultier, who had barely seen a couple of sketches from the collection, applauded and even blushed in the stands when he discovered that the music was a kind of
mash up
of his beloved Mylene Farmer and his own voice in different interviews.
The public applauded each exit in a parade in which the models had the attitude and the ease more typical of a
ball
de
voguing
that of a gateway to use.
"I am inspired by the diversity of the street, so I wanted to be honest and direct with the proposal," explained Rousteing.
Three of Olivier Rousteing's proposals for Gaultier's new haute couture collection.Peter White (Getty Images) / Pascal Le Segretain (Getty Images)
Another show, albeit much more conceptual and introspective, was the one conceived by John Galliano at
Artisanal
, Maison Margiela's (recycled) haute couture line.
The British designer has explored the possibilities of the short film for these two years, and now, in his first couture show after the pandemic, he wanted to integrate it into a montage that fused theater and cinematographic visuals.
Galliano, who has always been a great storyteller, has put aside the opulence of his years at Dior to tell much more intimate stories at the Belgian house.
If in his previous couture collection, inspired by Flemish painting, he spoke, through video, of the struggle of a small community with natural elements through garments that were aged and torn, now he has wanted to tell a story of
cowboys
and vampires titled
Cinema Inferno
, a kind of meta-story about the world of cinema itself with nods to the
western
and to the melodramas of golden Hollywood.
Because if there's one thing Galliano likes, apart from telling stories, it's revisiting costumes from different periods: here were sand-dyed coats, gothic capes and evening gowns from the 1950s, not as grandiose as those from his time in Dior but equally well made.
The creator's work at Margiela, perhaps the quintessential conceptual house, seeks precisely the opposite: to praise the imperfection and crudeness of materials and to reflect the passing of time, to break away from canonical ideas of beauty to value the emotional and intimate dress.
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Guram Gvasaglia did not want to excite but to do, in his own words, "a real fashion show".
His reality, that is, the reality of Vetements since the Gvasaglia brothers founded the firm in 2014, remains the same, despite the fact that Demna left the creative direction in the hands of his brother, until now the manager of the company, the past December: models from different generations walking fast and ironically with clothing stereotypes, from the gray office worker to the
celebrity
(this time disguised as Paris Hilton), the ostentatious millionaire or the post-adolescent
tracksuit
.
In his first show as a designer, Guram has displayed all the elements of Vetements (and, by extension, some of those of Balenciaga).
There were the narrow neon-colored glasses and the extra-large ones as a helmet, the shoulder pads, the knee-length sleeves, the
oversize
sweatshirts , the t-shirts with a message and even a trench coat printed with the already mythical pictures of the moving bags.
How could it be otherwise, the chosen place has been an abandoned party room full of rubble in the Pigalle area.
Four of the exits during the Vetements haute couture show on July 7 in Paris. Victor Boyko (Getty Images)
The closure of the Paris haute couture fashion week was starred by the Spanish woman invited by the Federation to participate in this exclusive calendar.
Juana Martín's has also been an intimate show, with Israel Fernández singing verses by Lorca and Rossy de Palma opening a
show
entitled
Andalucía
, an excellent succession of black or white garments that celebrate their craftsmanship and clothing tradition by merging genres and traditions: from the headdresses in fluorescent colors that imitated the forge made by Vivascarrión to the embossed leather shoes designed in collaboration with the Breton house Maison Felger.
A collection made between his workshops in Córdoba and his
atelier
of Paris, where he settled five years ago.
“They asked me how I was going to reflect the light of Andalusia in my black suits, but Andalusia is precisely that, the light that radiates from black”, commented the Cordovan designer after the parade, “a different tribute, with a certain Lorca-like drama but also with the optimism that characterizes us”, she explained while Pascal Morand, president of the French Haute Couture Federation, came over to congratulate her.
The Fendi fashion show of its haute couture collection for the autumn/winter 2023 season, this Thursday in Paris.CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT (AFP)
The free interpretation of other cultures and their clothing has also been the starting point of Kim Jones's proposal at Fendi, which for the first time has moved away from Rome, headquarters of the firm and recurring inspiration in its collections to find it in Kyoto and in Paris, specifically, in
Japonisme
late 19th century French
Hand-printed 18th-century kimono fabrics have been resurrected by Jones using the same centuries-old technique (called Kata Yuzen) of hand-spinning and hand-printing.
But the work of the British designer in the Fendi couture line is not looking for spectacularity, nor, of course, for appropriation: the vast Japanese textile tradition serves here to revive the technique.
However, the result is much more practicable than your starting point.
The kimono is the basis for flowing dresses and tunics whose mastery comes from the nuances that are not seen at first glance.
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