Haute couture and fashion is art and it is once more beautifully proven by Jean Paul Gaultier’s internationally touring multimedia exhibition entitled “The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk.” Now on view at the Brooklyn Museum, the exhibit’s East Coast edition brings unique prêt-à-porter along with other exclusive content pieces for the pleasure of Brooklynites and New Yorkers.
Organized around various rooms focusing on special themes, the exhibit features around 140 haute couture and prêt-à-porter ensembles created between the mid-’70s and 2010 along with sketches, accessories, photographs, stage costumes, and short films emphasizing the couturier’s various partnerships with pop icons, filmmakers, celebrities, and international models who stepped into Gaultier’s world.
Tanel Bedrossiantz
1992
Digital print
15 x 12 inches
Jean Paul Gaultier’s ready-to-wear fall-winter collection of 1984-85
© Paolo Roversi
While the inaugural room is an impressive kick off for the exhibition praising the navy world and the marinière – directly originating from the French navy jersey tee shirts – we soon discover other themes of punk fashion, provocative stage costumes, double-skin trompe l’oeil pieces, and wedding gowns inspired by Native American and African cultures.
This retrospective shows us how the couturier blurs the boundaries between sexes and cultures. Fascinated by society, identity, and beauty born of difference, it is through his haute-couture masterpieces and aesthetic codes that Gaultier addresses a true message of tolerance and universal love in modern society.
Untitled
n.d.
Digital photo
47 x 74 inches
La Mariee wedding gown from Jean Paul Gaultier’s Mermaids spring-summer haute couture collection of 2008
Latex bodysuit with golden scales, cone bra with shells, long, form-fitting sequined alpaca skirt with latex mermaid’s tail
©Alix Malka
“The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk” is now on view at the Brooklyn Museum until February 23, 2014. For this presentation, Jean-Paul Gaultier partnered with the Montreal-based theater company Ubu Compagnie de Création to offer the face-animated mannequins.
Untitled (Alek Wek) Numero
March 2000
Dubar gown from Jean Paul Gaultier’s Romantic India, women’s spring-summer haute couture collection of 2000
Camouflage evening gown featuring myriad khaki, cinnamon, and papaya tulle ruffles
© Karl Lagerfeld
