GAULTIER IN THREE-QUARTER VIEW
Last Sunday, I attended a Jean Paul Gaultier fashion show. Well, when I say “attended”… I was sitting down, which was already quite an achievement! And when I say “Jean Paul Gaultier,” I should really say “Jean Paul Laptkin,” since Jean Paul left us in 2020. He left, but the fashion house remained. Usually, it’s the other way around: the fashion house goes under and the gentleman stays behind, sitting in his living room, facing a bailiff or an official from the financial crimes unit.
So, they hired a Dutchman. A Dutchman! Can you believe it? A man from the Low Countries, tasked with dreaming up extravagant feminine silhouettes, complete with spikes! But really, when you come from a flat country, how can you possibly have anything but flat ideas? He got around the problem by designing collars that rise upwards, in three dimensions, like a Dutchman seeking revenge on the geography of his childhood.
There were mirrors everywhere, too, in an atmosphere reminiscent of a brothel on Rue Quincampoix. Enough to conjure up some “fetid rods”… Oh, sorry, fertile virgins! There were so many mirrors that you could no longer tell who was walking the runway: the models or the spectators? I spent twenty minutes greeting a gentleman opposite me. It was me. He didn’t even return my greeting.
The designer declared: “I prefer the three-quarter view.” Three-quarter! The bimbo sitting next to me, a former Bulgarian truck-stop hooker, asked, “Why a three-quarter-rate loser?” Which just goes to show how thoroughly versed in French the people who attend these shows really are. But why not three-quarter view, after all? There’s the front, there’s the profile, and there’s the three-quarter view. The three-quarter view is the face that’s halfway out the door but doesn’t have the guts to say so.
Then came the little bells, or jingle bells, depending on how you look at it. Now, I’d ask you all to remain calm. Little bells! Found at the bottom of a drawer by the Fleming! This story moved me deeply. Imagine: someone opens a drawer and discovers little bells dating back to 1989. They had been waiting in the dark for thirty-six years without saying a word. For a little bell, that’s quite a feat! The sole purpose of a bell is to make noise. And this one managed to go thirty-six years without ringing. It’s probably the most discreet little bell in the entire history of little bells.
Then came the white blazers. Perfectly tailored, admittedly, but paired with conical bras, visible through a fabric porthole. A porthole! On a torso! Where is all this heading? Out to sea? If you have a porthole in your chest, you must be on a boat. And boats, ladies and gentlemen, do not walk the runway. They set sail!
You might say, “It’s a tribute to the 1984 corset.” To which I would reply: yes, but the 1984 corset didn’t have a porthole! And above all, it never sank Madonna, who now looks like the illegitimate love child of Zahia and Franck Ribéry. On my way out, someone asked me, “So, did you enjoy it?” I replied, “It was serious stuff.” A classic line from someone who is determined not to commit to an opinion by saying the English equivalent of “It’s amazing.” They looked at me as though I’d insulted a dead man. But honestly, it’s true!
We were at Gaultier’s! The house of the cone, the Breton stripe, the man in a skirt, the pregnant model! And here we were, faced with a cold show. A cold show from a fashion house that had spent its entire life turning up the heat! I felt as though I were attending a funeral. A funeral with little bells, which is a rather peculiar idea, all things considered. Unless they were there to allow the deceased to sound the alarm in case of mistaken identity. Anyway…
“A designer who finds his balance between rigour and eccentricity,” wrote the journalist Le Flope Fringuant, Mr Five Minutes of Fashion, Shower Included. Balance! That’s precisely the problem. At Gaultier, nobody ever set out to find balance. They set out to take a tumble! And the only falls that count are the ones that show off a derrière. Now that we’ve found this balance, we’re stuck. Stuck like the head of a tampon applicator, with seams enough to make an onion weep.
So, is this what fashion has become? Standing straight. Staying upright on a heel. Making it through an entire dinner in a white blazer without leaving a “stain.” As for me, when I left the Palais de Tokyo, it was dark. I caught my reflection in a shop window. From the front, I looked like an old, tired man. From the side, I looked like a man walking away. And from the three-quarter view… From the three-quarter view, I hesitated. I was thinking of that handsome thirty-year-old young man who no longer existed. In the end, I took the metro home. I even forgot my bicycle, which tells you just how deeply this show had unsettled me.
FM