The 27th of September will be remembered as the day on which a very long and special era ended: Jean Paul Gaultier showed his last prêt-a-porter collection at Paris Fashion Week, abandoning forever, and quite theatrically, this part of the fashion world. With the official reasons being the willingness to focus on the haute couture and perfume sides of business, Jean Paul Gaultier has ended a 38-year-long era of controversial and fantastic fashion. As it should be, the iconic fashion designer’s last ready-to-wear show was a spectacular celebration of his career and, notably, of all the people that have aided and supported him in the adventure.
An exit-party-mood filled Le Grand Rex, a cinema in Paris’ second arrondissement were the show took place, serving up champagne and boxes of popcorn following Spice Girls tunes. The show was, as always, utterly extravagant: taking on the theme of a beauty pageant, it was appropriately named Élection de Miss Jean Paul Gaultier 2015. The show was divided into different sections, two of which consisted of Mexican wrestling costumes and smokings which showed Gaultier’s great talent in mixing influences from men and women’s wear. One of the most popular and memorable sections proposed a tongue-in-cheek play on the fashion world itself, with models taking on the identities of prominent fashion icons: Lindsey Wixson and Magdalena Jasek walked down the catwalk dressed as Suzy Menkes or Grace Coddington, offering a touching moment for real Menkes and Coddington sitting in the front-row.
Besides dressing the models as fashion giants, Gaultier also showed some of his most classic and characteristic pieces (such as the trench coat), held a cone-bra corset dress competition (in which Coco Rocha won), and showed his true and unique DNA (that always constituted part of his success): he managed to surprise and put a smile on the sometimes a little too stiff fashion world. When the gold confetti started to cover the catwalk, they did not just mark the ending of JPG’s Spring 2015 show, but to a glorious, nearly 40-year, long period in which we have seen Jean Paul Gaultier’s design grow and develop. Yet we want to wait for much longer to see it come to a full close.
