Genderless clothing, men in skirts, visible corsets, models of different ages, sizes and identities… Everything that is now considered inclusive was already worn by Jean Paul Gaultier (Bagneux, Hauts-de-Seine, 1952) in the eighties on the catwalk and in the 1990s, when he became the enfant terrible of fashion. His story, which begins with a suburban boy who dreamed of becoming a couturier, is told in his life's work “Fashion Freak Show,” which premiered in Paris in 2019 and can be seen at the Coliseum Theater in Barcelona from April 4 to 21. Gaultier has anticipated many trends, but one still defies it: the fight against objectified women. “I always didn’t like the concept of an object woman. Inequalities are not normal,” he lamented this Wednesday in the Catalan capital, where he had traveled to present his show.
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“Here's the difference.” This was the main message of the iconic designer, known worldwide for the figure of a sailor in a striped shirt that hides one of the best-selling colognes in the world. If he wanted to empower women, he also asked men to change, to free themselves from the macho image so that they could become people who were able to express themselves without prejudice. “When I was a child, men couldn’t cry,” he remembers. And he dressed them sensitively, he put their skirts on them, he marked their waists, he laced their shirts…
In fact, he wanted to turn the object woman on its head by creating “The Object Man” collection in 1984. It was his first ready-to-wear show for men and it gave birth to the myth of the statuesque sailor in the striped shirt, inspired by the protagonist of Rainer W. Fassbinder's 1982 film Querelle. There has always been an It exists a close connection between cinema and fashion, and this story illustrates this. “It made me nervous that the woman had to be flirty and sexy to be liked, but the man didn't,” he remembers. Hence his decision to break these established codes.
He also took the corset to the extreme. Instead of hiding it, he brought it out in the figure of Madonna, who became his muse with the Blond Ambition Tour. Everyone remembers the cone-shaped bra that gave the female breast more meaning than ever. It was a way to give women power. “It was like putting armor on him,” he said. Faced with the possibility that this garment is currently serving to re-objectify it, Jean Paul Gaultier had no choice but to recognize that “everything is a reflection of society and is full of contradictions.” This feminine shape with conical breasts can also be found on the bottle of one of her women's fragrances, Divine.
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Many of his designs, which shout sexual freedom from the rooftops, can be seen in The Fashion Freak Show, the journey through the life of a boy from the suburbs who, without any fashion training, managed to become a leading designer and creator of a fashion house empire. The name is now mainly in the hands of the Catalan company Puig. The couturier said he tried to include the most representative clothes and shows of his career, which he began at the age of 24 under his own name after working with Pierre Cardin, one of his teachers.
His goal with the show is “for the audience to sing, dance, laugh and have a fun evening,” he commented, fascinated by theatrical rituals such as opening and closing the curtain, lighting up the rooms and setting the sequences to music . Something he has repeatedly compared to a fashion show, recalling that he always wanted to direct his shows and select all of these components to create a story. He also did not miss another of his predictions, woven into the 1984 collection “A closet for two”, in which he proposed completely unisex clothing. I have already played with the dissolution of the boundaries between the feminine and the masculine when the acronym LGTBI was not yet on everyone's lips in public opinion.
Fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier presents the piece “Fashion Freak Show” at the Teatro Coliseum in Barcelona. Massimiliano Minocri
Jean Paul Gaultier, who has retired from the industry, said happily that he continues to “work with fashion through spectacle.” Although the premiere was already five years ago, this production arrives in Barcelona practically unchanged, only that of a few actors. It is a production halfway between cabaret and musical, always with a comedic tone, which begins with the boy who, while watching the 194 film “Falbalas” by Jacques Becker, begins to dream about fashion.
With musical, circus and other cabaret acts, it is a two and a half hour journey through their successes and failures, through a colorful world. The casting is as diverse as their shows, where they opted for models of all kinds, including amateurs, with character and personality, such as Rossy de Palma, who plays her teacher from her youth, or Catherine Deneuve, who does not appear, but gives voice to the haute couture collections for men.
After a journey through Paris and London, the show arrives in the Catalan capital. A “great city” where the designer spent many moments and has friends, he said. In addition, the press conference took place precisely in the dome of the Teatro Coliseum, a place where fashion shows have also taken place, according to one of the journalists present and confirmed by Mercedes Balañá of the Balañá Group. A coincidence that he welcomed with joy. Next April 4, Jean Paul Gaultier will once again feel the excitement of raising the curtain on theater, fashion and his life.
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