Last week, Nicolas Di Felice, the artistic director of Courrèges, posted to Instagram Stories a video he had taken of the Paris skyline at night, his camera slowly panning across the city. Di Felice had taken the video from a vantage point relatively new to him: the roof of the Jean Paul Gaultier atelier on Rue Saint Martin in the city’s Marais neighborhood, where he has been working since late last year on his vision of haute couture for the house. It will be shown tomorrow amidst the other fall 2024 couture shows, with Di Felice joining the ever-growing roll call of designers who have guested at Gaultier for one season, including Haider Ackermann, Simone Rocha, Glenn Martens, and Olivier Rousteing.
Di Felice’s video couldn’t have been a more cinematic — or evocative—curtain-raiser on what it means to design the couture for one of the most iconic designers ever. Put simply: It means that you’re at the very pinnacle of Paris fashion. Gaultier, after all, is the designer who made Paris cool in the 1980s (snatching the crown from London) with his insanely influential collections which, over the years and decades, riffed on everything from underwear-as-outerwear, with all its corsetry lacing and pointy bras, to pinstripe tailoring, tattoos, traditional Hasidic dress, Breton stripes, punk, piercings, Mongolia, and Folies Bergère feathers—all of it worn by everyone from Madonna to Neneh Cherry, and all the while becoming a pop cultural icon in his own right. The designer worked with director Pedro Almodovar, co-hosted the cultish British TV show Eurotrash (divinely hilarious; go YouTube it) and, in 1989, recorded his very own pop song, “How To Do That,” more of which later.
Gaultier is, says Di Felice, someone whose power to inspire is undiminished. “Jean Paul has always expressed a lot to people,” he told me. “He passed by the opening of the new Courrèges store last night, and everyone was like ‘Ahhh!’ You talk to designers of my generation, to the young generation, everyone, he’s a star. When I was a kid, he was the only famous designer in the countryside, because everyone would wear his perfume—men and women—and he was on television because he was dressing Madonna. And honestly,” Di Felice went on to say, “Jean Paul really showed for the first time queer communities, different ethnicities, different bodies—he was the precursor of everything we see now. And it’s really Paris as well, you know? For me, if I have one image [of what Gaultier has done], it’s like I’m coming to Paris to be myself.”
Di Felice is telling me this via Zoom. We’re chatting because we’re previewing his couture for the label, an exercise which requires him to find a connection strong enough and powerful enough to tell the story of his vision of Gaultier—the man, the designer, and the house—and do it all at once, for one time only. (“I always say, One season at a time—I can always keep something for the following season,” said Di Felice, “but not this time.”) Clearly he feels no lack of personal connection. And also, as the preview went on, it’s clear he felt no lack of aesthetic connection—or inspiration—either. Of course, given this story you’re reading is a preview, it can only say so much, because… you know, umm, spoilers. If you want to get the fullest look at Di Felice’s exceptional Gaultier couture, you will have to go read Nicole Phelps’s review and then study each of the 32 (at the time of writing) looks he’s going to show. But because I hate to be too much of a tease, here are some words to mull over until then: undress, gazar, slash, sleeves, leather, and hook and eye. That’s it—and even now I have probably said too much. (You also get a little sneak peak below!)