As the enfant-terrible of French fashion bows out of the Couture schedule, we take a deep dive into five trends he pioneered

Text Jack Moss

In 1985, Gaultier showed a collection titled Et Dieu Créa l'Homme (And God Created Man), for which male models wore wide-leg trousers, over which a wrapover panel gave the appearance that they were wearing skirts. He returned to the ‘man-skirt’ in various forms throughout his career – from printed sarongs, forever immortalised by 90s-era David Beckham to the kilt-like style the designer made his own personal uniform. And, though the garment certainly broke with gender conventions, Gaultier actually chose it for its ancient implications of virile masculinity. “Historically men wearing skirts were something very powerful and very masculine,” explains Loriot. “Samurais were wearing robes and in Scotland you had the kilt. This was what excited Gaultier.” “Gaultier doesn’t claim to be neither political nor provocative,” adds Valencia. “But he does own up to being called a revolutionary; he acknowledges his constant desire to question society’s notion of what is deemed ‘acceptable’. I think his fearless attitude influenced the standard for the gender-neutral movement we’re currently witnessing in fashion.” In the years since, numerous designers have had their own man-in-skirt moments, from Comme Des Garçons to Alexander McQueen, Miguel Adrover to Walter van Beirendonck, alongside various cultural figures: Nirvana in Dries Van Noten, A$AP Rocky, and Kanye West, who wore a leather Givenchy kilt to promote Watch The Throne in 2011. RUNWAY DIVERSITY

“He never made a choice to do it,” says Loriot of Gaultier’s always-diverse casting, which saw men and women found on the street walk on his runway alongside household names. “It was more that he was just obsessed with different types of beauty. He wanted to create a new normality; to say that there is not only one type of person, one type of femininity and masculinity.” All the way back in the 1980s, he placed an advertisement in a French newspaper, calling for: “Atypical models”, noting that “The facially disfigured should not refrain from applying”. His commitment to casting those traditionally left out of fashion has not wavered since, with trans models, models of colour and plus-size models walking season on season. “Gaultier stands out as being one of the first designers to showcase his work on real people,” says Valencia. “His celebration for the body and the pieces that adorn it are palpable.” In the years since, street casting has become the norm and runway diversity has – rightly – become one of fashion’s hot-button topics, but for Gaultier it was simple: he wanted his runway to be a reflection of the world in which he lived. TATTOO MOTIFS

It was actually Martin Margiela – himself a former intern of Jean Paul Gaultier – who first showed a ‘tattoo top’, a sheer pullover decorated with trompe l’oeil illustrations, giving the appearance of tattoos when worn, in 1989. But it was Gaultier – inspired after attending a tattoo convention in the UK – that pushed the idea even further with an SS94 collection titled Les Tatouages (in the collection models had other body modifications too, some real, some fake: from pierced nipples to noses) which paid ode to the transformative power of body art. “He wanted it to have this realistic effect on the body and cheat the eye of the person who would wear it,” says Loiriot. “So many people did it again and even now, you have these little shops who sell these printed sleeves which look like people wearing tattoos, which I think is funny.” More recently, a number of brands have done their own take on the style, from Vetements – a knowing homage to Margiela – to Comme des Garçons, whose SS19 womenswear collection saw sheer bodysuits and dresses decorated with tattoo-esque images of roses. UNDERWEAR AS OUTERWEAR

Gaultier may not have been the first to note the undergarment-as-outerwear’s capacity for shock – fellow provocateur Vivienne Westwood showed a silk bustier on top of a blouse as part of her AW82 collection Nostalgia of Mud – but Gaultier’s corsets remain the stuff of fashion lore. The corset fascinated Gaultier throughout his life – in the Barbican exhibition they displayed a teddy bear for which Gaultier had made a corset as a child. “His grandmother, who was very feminine, had all these corsets she had kept from the earlier days when she was young,” says Loriot. “He would see all these drawers and it was like a treasure chest. He was fascinated.” His most famous underwear-as-outerwear moment was of course Madonna, though lingerie would appear in various forms throughout his career, including the pinched-waist, corseted torso of his Jean Paul Gaultier Classique perfume bottle, which now comes in over 50 different styles. Now, underwear-as-outerwear has become the norm, though a growing number of young designers – including British designer Charlotte Knowles and CSM-grad Nensi Dojaka, who will show as part of Fashion East this February – are pushing the genre into futuristic new forms. TROMPE L’OEIL

Courtesy of Jean Paul Gaultier