Jean Paul Gaultier: “I have always disliked the concept of the female object”

Genderless clothing, men in skirts, visible corsets, models of different ages, sizes and identities... Everything that is now called inclusive, Jean Paul Gaultier (1952) already took to the catwalk in the eighties and nineties, when he became the

enfant terrible

of fashion.

His story, which begins with a suburban boy who dreamed of being

a couturier

, is what is told in the work of his life,

Fashion Freak Show

, which premiered in 2019 in Paris and can be seen at the Teatro Coliseum in Barcelona. from April 4 to 21.

Gaultier anticipated many trends, but there is one that still resists him, the fight against objectified women.

“I have always disliked the concept of an object woman.

Inequalities are not normal,” he lamented this Wednesday in the Catalan capital, where he has traveled to present his show.

More information

Jean-Paul Gaultier's crazy cabaret

“Here's to the difference.”

This has been the main message left by the iconic designer, recognized worldwide for the figure of a sailor in a striped shirt who hides one of the best-selling colognes in the world.

If he wanted to empower women, he also invited men to change, to free themselves from the macho image, so that they could become a person capable of expressing themselves without prejudice.

“When I was a child, men couldn't cry,” he recalled.

And he dressed them sensitively, he put skirts on them, he marked their waists, he cinched their shirts...

In fact, he wanted to turn the object woman on its head by creating the collection 'The Object Man' in 1984.

It was his first ready-to-wear

show

for men and where the myth of the statuesque sailor in a striped shirt was born, inspired by the protagonist of the film

Querelle

, by Rainer W. Fassbinder, from 1982. There has always been a close connection between cinema and fashion and this story exemplifies it.

“It made me nervous that the woman had to be flirtatious and sexy to be liked and the man didn't,” he recalled.

Hence his decision to break those established codes.

He also took the corset to the extreme.

Instead of hiding it, she brought it out in the figure of Madonna, who with the Blond Ambition Tour became her muse.

Everyone remembers that cone-shaped bra, which gave more relevance than ever to the female breast.

It was a way to give power to women.

“It was like putting armor on him,” she said.

Regarding the possibility that this garment currently serves to reify it again, Jean Paul Gaultier had no choice but to recognize that “everything is a reflection of society and is full of contradictions.”

This feminine form with conical breasts is also the one on the bottle of one of his fragrances for women, Divine.

Many of his designs, which shout sexual freedom from the rooftops, can be seen in the show

Fashion Freak Show

, the journey through the life of a suburban kid who, without training in fashion, managed to become a leading designer, creator of an empire. with its name that is now mainly in the hands of the Catalan company Puig.

The couturier said that he has tried to include the most representative dresses and shows of his career, which he began under his own name when he was 24 years old, after having worked with Pierre Cardin, one of his teachers.

With the show, his goal is for “the audience to sing, dance, laugh and have a fun night,” he commented, fascinated by such theatrical rituals as opening and closing the curtain, illuminating the spaces, and putting music to the sequences.

Something that he has repeatedly compared to a fashion show, while he recalled that he always wanted to direct his

shows

, choosing all these components to create a story.

He has also not overlooked another of his predictions, made in the collection 'A closet for two', from 1984, where he proposed totally unisex garments.

He was already playing with the dissolution of the boundaries between the feminine and the masculine when the LGTBI acronym was not on the lips of public opinion.

Fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier at the Teatro Coliseum in Barcelona to present the play 'Fashion Freak Show'. Massimiliano Minocri

Retired from the industry, Jean Paul Gaultier said with satisfaction that he continues “working with fashion through spectacle.”

Although it premiered five years ago, this production arrives practically unchanged in Barcelona, ​​only that of some actors.

It is a production halfway between cabaret and musical, always with a comedic tone, which begins with that boy who, watching the film

Falbalas,

directed by Jacques Becker in 194, begins to dream about fashion.

With musical, circus and more cabaret numbers, it is a two and a half hour journey through their successes and failures, through a multicolored world.

The casting is as varied as their shows were, where they opted for models of all kinds, also non-professionals, with character and personality, such as Rossy de Palma, who plays her teacher from her youth, or Catherine Deneuve, who does not appear but puts on voice to men's haute couture collections.

After passing through Paris and London, the show arrives in the Catalan capital.

A “magnificent city” where the designer has spent many moments and has friends, he said.

Furthermore, the press conference was held precisely in the dome of the Teatro Coliseum, a place that has also hosted fashion shows, according to one of the attending journalists and corroborated by Mercedes Balañá, from the Balañá Group.

A coincidence that she received with joy.

Next April 4, Jean Paul Gaultier will once again feel that excitement of opening the curtain, on theater, on fashion and on his life.

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