Jean Paul Gaultier on France’s fashion rebels

Editor’s Note: In October 2015, Balmain artistic director Olivier Rousteing joined NCS Style as guest editor. He commissioned a sequence of options on the theme of #variety, exploring points round fashion, politics, gender, household, race and tradition.

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I didn’t go to fashion faculty. I’ve been in opposition to formal training ever since I found Santa Claus isn’t actual, so every part I realized about fashion rising up, got here from studying magazines and pictures.

I bear in mind watching this stunning film, “Falbalas” from French director Jacques Becker, displaying the lifetime of a couturier within the 1940’s and the manufacturing of a fashion present, after I was 12 years outdated. The present had motion, it had life, and it had theater and it actually captured my creativeness. I’ve been fascinated by designers who evoke drama ever since.

For that purpose, I’m very proud to be from France, which has given the world so many pioneering designers. While I don’t imagine there’s something innate concerning the French and elegance, it’s not possible to disclaim that modern fashion’s roots are on this nation. From the start, France – and Paris particularly – has been the capital and coronary heart of fashion, with an extended listing of innovators who modified the best way we checked out garments, the physique and even ourselves.

And because the world turns into smaller and the business extra international, that historical past and affect are extra essential – and wider felt – than ever earlier than. Experimentation, selection and high quality can come from anyplace at present, however the ones who laid the groundwork for this did so in France.

Like many designers, I admired France’s most celebrated, unique and audacious couturiers.

Christian Dior’s ground-breaking “New Look” modified the best way girls dressed world wide. His February 1947 assortment’s signature rebelled in opposition to wartime uniforms, austerity and cloth restrictions — the waist was cinched, calves had been proven and busts had been celebrated.

Madame Grès had a beautiful high fashion home, Grès, and he or she labored in her personal universe. Originally a sculptor, her silk jersey pleated attire appeared as if that they had been pulled out of historical Greece.

But it was the designers of the 1960’s and early 1970’s who actually pushed boundaries, difficult the normal class of high fashion with radical prêt-à-porter (ready-to-wear) collections.

After many years of traditional sophistication, this new wave of designers introduced one thing contemporary— in tune with the sensibility of the time wherein we had been dwelling. They knew concerning the sexual revolution, about going into house, about modernism and structure, and used that of their work. No one had seen something prefer it earlier than.

I began working with Pierre Cardin after I was 18. He was one of many business’s prime innovators. I’d at all times admired Cardin as a result of he appeared like such a showman. He was so free, doing these geometric, generally summary designs that had been like structure, which he had studied earlier than he went into fashion. He additionally designed every part from furnishings to industrial design to automotive interiors.

André Courrèges labored at Balenciaga for 10 years earlier than opening his personal home. He was a educated engineer earlier than turning into a designer, and from early on I used to be at all times below the impression that he was beginning a revolution. I understand now it was as a result of he was truly dressing the true girl of the 1960’s — a contemporary girl who drove, somewhat than sipping cocktails at house. His garments could have appeared futuristic, however they had been excellent for that second.

I additionally cherished Paco Rabanne, who invented the unimaginable metallic costume. It was in all places, worn by all the most important yé-yé singers – the rock and roll women of France — and Brigitte Bardot and Barbarella additionally wore Paco Rabanne. That was actually essential to me as a result of I used to be at all times influenced and impressed by what actresses and singers had been sporting. The jet set had been simply retro and cheesy – I appeared to girls with persona.

Then there was Yves Saint Laurent, who was at all times totally different from the others. He was scandalous and actually mirrored change – the sexual revolution, the rise of liberal beliefs in France – in a glamorous method. He approached innovation fabulously, displaying a girl in a swimsuit, however with out sacrificing her femininity.

I’ve at all times tried to be trustworthy and push boundaries in the identical method as these earlier than. I by no means needed to decorate the traditional, elegant sort and I spotted early on in my profession that what the critics say is stylish isn’t at all times so.

My profession actually started within the mid-1970’s. By then, Paris had someway grow to be extra conservative. Fashion wasn’t like what you see within the motion pictures: after the hippie interval of the 1960’s, folks started to decorate with much less of a way of journey, as in the event that they had been rejecting fashion, and dressing very plain. I needed one thing else, and so what I did firstly shocked lots of people.

After Pierre Cardin, I went on to Jean Patou, an outdated couture home that not exists. It was stereotypical of the extra conventional French fashion code. When I arrived to work in my biker boots, they mentioned “But why? Where is your motorbike?”

And so I made a decision that after I created my very own assortment, I’d push the restrict of what’s stunning and what’s not.

When I began designing for myself in 1976, many discovered my work too sexual, and for a very long time the French fashion press ignored me. “He plays, he makes games, it’s not real clothes,” they mentioned.

Of course they had been actual garments, simply merely put collectively and performed with. Who says you possibly can’t put on a biker jacket with a tutu, or that males can’t be horny and androgynous?

The youthful technology of ladies responded. They needed that blend, and I used to be doing one thing that happy them.

So a lot modified since then. Now, Saint Laurent, Courrèges and Cardin are heroes in French fashion historical past, and the French press hasn’t criticized me almost as a lot over the past 20 years — making me query whether or not I’m doing one thing improper!

The newest technology of French designers is doing fantastic issues – Olivier Rousteing makes stunning garments for stunning folks at Balmain; Nicolas Ghesquière is unbelievable; I like the angle of Hedi Slimane at Saint Laurent – however dynamic designers from different international locations are retaining riot and distinction alive on this nation too.

Like battle and occupation formed the ’40s, and the sexual revolution modified the world within the ‘60s, globalization has modified the panorama of at present.

Now greater than ever, Paris Fashion Week is the place the world’s most gifted and provocative try to construct their manufacturers and share their perspective as a result of they know what Paris represents: creativity, audacity and, nonetheless, status.

Here I consider the artistic Japanese designer Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, my former assistant Martin Margiela from Belgium, Vivienne Westwood from England, and Rick Owens from America – all of whom have proven on schedule right here.

Like the French visionaries I admired after I was rising up, these worldwide designers have opened my eyes to unimaginable – and generally stunning – new ideas and concepts. They have their very own world and their very own id, and do stuff you can not count on from anybody else.

How very French of them.