THE WORLD OF OF JEAN PAUL GAULTIER

A couple of days after falling and damaging my knee the other week, there came an out-of-the-blue message from a friend of a friend based in London asking whether we would like tickets to Jean Paul Gaultier’s self-penned musical stage stage extravaganza, Fashion Freak Show, up in Tokyo.

What to do?

CONS:

1. I had been ordered to rest and not put any weight on my leg and was in the mood to just veg out at home and recover
2. Going to the packed out choc a bloc heart of ‘young Tokyo’, Shibuya, a place neither of us particular enjoy any more with its tangle of manic and overenergized treeless bustle, felt kind of daunting for a suddenly immobilized codger on (an admittedly stylish and JPGesque carved wooden twizzle of a) walking stick.
3. We hate musicals. (Yes, you read that correctly. D even more so than me: I would rather just sit and home and stare at the wall than watch the deeply alienating spectacle of mortifying jazz hands and pearl-toothed crescendos (I realize this supposedly automatically disqualifies us from being card carrying homos : people have regarded us in sheer horror in the past when this has come up (you don’t like musicals? what the hell is wrong with you?!!!) My loathing of shopping is also grounds for eviction from gaysville: heaven is supposed to be spending the day clothes shopping on Oxford Street or Knightsbridge, a quick tipple at Harvey Nics and then catching a show on the West End, the kind of day that would have me drained yet overstuffed as a clapped out vacuum cleaner). I can do cinematic screen versions of West Side Story and The Sound Of Music, Grease and a couple of others, but no – by and large, musicals, everything about them just makes me cringe.)

PROS:

1. My sister, a die hard musical theatre lover, raised by Andrew Lloyd Webber-fans and devotees of Les Misérables (my parents love the musicals) had already been to see this Gaultier show twice, and with its 80’s and 90’s music and cultural references had assured me that, as it was not a musical but a hybrid of dance and circus and runway vogueing – there was a very high possibility I would love it
2. I had been lying around feeling sorry for myself all week in a bit of a pity party and secretly, despite my laziness and bruised pain, loved the idea of just going out and seeing something new (natural curiosity and hedonism do usually win out)
3. I have never been to a fashion show and have always wanted to
4. I kind of love Jean Paul Gaultier.

(we went …)

Quite distinct from most other designers in his personality and comic lack of pretense, JPG’s hilarious Eurotrash tv series, which he presented with Antoine De Caulnes in the strongest French accent intelligible to humanity, was quite often on in the background at our house late Friday nights during the 1990’s; he brought a unique irreverence and silliness to everything he approached, while still retaining a steadfast coolness (his fashion maison and reputation were exploding simultaneously, yet the vast majority of couturiers in this situation would be too self-serious and removed from the rest of us to deign to ever self deprecate or just make fun of everything and bring levity with his reportage on the shallower delights). Yet JPG just seemed to revel in it; I remember buying the 12″ single of his 1989 house anthem ‘How To Do That‘ when it came out

-the b-side of which was simply an engraving of his famous scissor-log etched into the vinyl; I think it is lingering somewhere in a cardboard box in my parents’ garage

and, like anybody else, it will go without saying, was completely ravaged by the costumes he designed for Madonna’s more than iconic world tour of 1990, Blond Ambition (now here I can definitely get my G membership card back).

Although the Gaultier/Madonna cone bra association can sometimes feel like lazy journalism – the couturier, who retired in 2020 after decades in the business dressing all kinds of people including other pop singers as well as film stars and a whole plethora of the rich and famous – when working for a stint at Pierre Cardin in Manila in his earlier days he also attended to the needs of one shoe-loving Imelda Marcos), there is no doubt that in the mind of the public, the enduring and automatic link you make when you think of Gaultier is between M – about to embark on a Greatest Hits world tour where she will undoubtedly unearth some remixed version of this famous look – and the lingerie-as-armour she came out on stage to for her Fritz Lang and Lolita Lempicka inspired staging of Express Yourself; a performance which at the time felt very groundbreaking and daring and ridiculously cool (needless to say, the harnesses and bras and all the expected JPG paraphernalia were also quite prominent in the show).

When the eponymous debut perfume, Jean Paul Gaultier, later renamed Classique – a sweet, madamish, and muskily authoritative orange blossom vanilla created by Jacques Cavallier (originator of such heavy breathers as Alexander Mcqueen Kingdom, Lancôme Poême, Givenchy Hot Couture, Rochas Alchimie and Cinéma by Yves Saint Laurent) was released in 1993, the ‘enfant terrible’ – another overused Gaultierism – predictably ’caused a stir’ with the stark and rude female corset that had been blatantly pillaged from Schiaparelli’s Shocking flacon and was considered ‘provocative’ stored in its metallic wooden tin. I rather liked it: an Austrian woman I was teaching at the time would wear it to great effect, but a part of me, I will admit – already had a slightly tired sense of overkill. Madonna had moved on (she was now appearing nude in the Sex book rather than wearing any clothes), and the corset felt like yesterday’s news; even the perfume itself felt strangely familiar (probably because it was modelled on the powdery perfumes that his own grandmother would have undoubtedly worn back in the day). Yet in many ways this very simplicity of concept – a neo-vintage vibe and an immaculate flacon – was the genius of this scent. The design of the bottle has certainly withstood the test of time; the word is overused, but it is genuinely iconic; and with its many flankers, Classique as a perfume is still very popular among a certain demographic who have grown up with it – the flirtatious central accord in the perfume, sexy; convincing – a bit cheap and easy in a way, but still quite erotic, and it forms one of the central pillars of the JPG perfume universe along with the indestructible Le Mâle from 1995 (Francis Kurkdijian’s inimitable salty mint lavender vanilla musk that both D and I wore back in the day) ad well as the more recent, typically floral-honey gourmand Scandal.

(other Gaultier scents, including perhaps my favourite, , Fragile, from 1999, have long since been discontinued, although there has recently been a welcome resurrection of JP2)

Gaultier’s blockbuster men’s scent LE MALE, of course, is still going very strong, still a superseller in the European market, in various differing versions I am not familiar with (the Le Parfum edition is meant to be stunning, so do let me know if you are familiar with this one or any great Gaultier flankers that have dropped beneath the radar). With an even more ingeniously designed bottle that I wish I still had in my collection, one that really did push the envelope in what a man can accept on his dressing table, this blatantly homoerotic core of the world of JPG is based, on Jean Paul’s signature dress code, that of the marinière striped, blue and white sailor’s top, as synonymous with the blond flat-cropped cropped Frenchman as the dark glasses and ultrathin black tie of Karl Lagerfeld (gently mocked in the show, along with Anna Wintour, representing the Fashion Police in a ‘comedy’ section of the show I was slightly slithering down into my seat to: as a child I was always a bit uncomfortable and squirmy during overexaggerated pantomimes….)

The rest of the show we enjoyed. With fantastically positioned seats at the front of the Theater Orb at the top of the Hikarie department store just next to Shibuya station (thanks very much, indeed, Katy!) we got the full impact of the excellent set design – all graphic neon evocations of Paris and Soho, pulsating strobes of clubland and visually striking setpieces as the beautiful troupe of dancers, models and trapezistes who formed the cast took us through the life of Jean Paul, from a little boy, surgically attaching the notorious cone bras to his teddy bear under the watchful (but approving) eye of his fashionable grandmother, Marie Garrabe (the show begins with a film of an operation taking place, before morphing into an extravaganza of giant teddy bears dancing to, naturally. Chic’s Le Freak ( Nile Rogers curated the music for the show)

We watch the young idealistic and irrepressible stripe-shirted protagonist go through his life in Paris and London, falling in love, suffering tragedy when the love of his life dies of AIDS (a movingly rendered moment with a solitary dancer performing in the dark to a poignant version of Cole Porter’s I’ve Got You Under My Skin before being lifted up into the unknown); then intrepidly beginning his own fashion business in the eighties post punk era, at first reviled by the establishment, but then finally celebrated as an untrained, but undeniably extremely talented, visionary and stylist. A series of fashion shows featuring a range of his designs prove the point; songs from the eras by the likes of Blondie, The Sex Pistols, Curtis Mayfield, Josephine Baker, Edith Piaf via Grace Jones with La Vie En Rose and of course, Madonna, as the models parade and strut their stuff on the rapidly shifting stage contraptions.

Just to nitpick: sometimes, I will admit, I was wishing for a more coutureish wow factor – in my mind, Gaultier always had an opulence to his clothes that comes through in the 2022 collection, for example, by interim designer Glenn Martens (the house will continue under seasonal leadership by different creatives)

However, it was Gaultier himself who selected the 200 or more costumes from his oeuvre for this show so one must go along with his vision. And since sensuality and a ‘cheeky infectiousness’ are JPG trademarks, it was fitting that there was just as much bare flesh on display as fashionorama. The whole was kinetic, uplifting, frenetic yet very well choreographed; a celebration of creative freedom and beauty that the audience was whooping with delight to and lapping up throughout; you left the building with an uplifted glow.

It was also fascinating, when meeting with some of the producers at the theatre bar afterwards for some drinks, to hear about how genuinely nice and funny Jean Paul Gaultier is in real life. Flying out to Tokyo to do endless rounds of interviews with the Japanese press, he apparently hadn’t complained at all, was smiling the whole time, always gracious and encouraging (if super exacting) at the costume fittings and dress rehearsals – no one had anything but good things to say about him. I loved hearing about the concert stagff being in close proximity to some of my idols – Grace Jones walking into the office and being much tinier than expected; Boy George – another protege in the nineties – as hilariously bitchy as you would have expected him to be; hearing anecdotes about how much Gaultier has truly enjoyed putting on this show about his life – which he has apparently always wanted to do since he first got inspiration seeing the Folies Bergères on the television as as a child. It was a real toe dip into the JPG universe. When the show ends its run next week or so, it will touch down in Bavaria for a while and then continue elsewhere, constantly evolving and streamlining (the two hours went very fast – I would have liked it to go on a bit longer) – entertaining the many thousands of people who have been drawn to the designer’s innate style and ethos of inclusivity which was actually mirrored in the audience (what can potentially sound like PR in this regard can be borne out by his unconventional use, over his fashion career, of models of all shapes, ages, skin colours and sizes – he was one of the first to do this, bored of conventional ‘good taste’: something I can applaud with great gusto). I like Jean Paul Gaultier’s energy. His sense of humour. I like his clothes, his perfumes, and, even if injured – the theatre staff were extraordinarily efficient in whisking me and d up in special limited access elevators and secret passage ways – it was a very fun, therapeutic and enjoyable way to spend a Sunday evening.