A New Fashion Exhibition Proves Jean Paul Gaultier’s First Love Was Film

While Jean Paul Gaultier is best known for being a visionary fashion designer, his first love was movies. At the age of 13, Gaultier became infatuated with the drama of a fashion show after he saw Jacques Becker’s 1945 film Falbalas (Paris Frills), which follows the story of a couturier. That stayed with him for the next decade as he went on to apprentice with names like Pierre Cardin and Jean Patou in the early ‘70s, before launching his eponymous line which would become marked by innovative trademarks like conical corsetry and trompe l’oeil.

In fact, throughout his career, Gaultier created costumes for movies ranging from Pedro Almodovar’s Kika, Bad Education, and The Skin I Live In to Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element. Now, the designer’s love for the cinema — and the role it had on his collections — is on display at the “CinéMode par Jean Paul Gaultier” exhibition at the SCAD FASH museum in Lacoste, Savannah College of Art and Design’s study-abroad campus in Provence, France.

“[Falbalas] was for me like a dream. It was theatrical,” Gaultier said during a talk at SCAD before the opening of the exhibition, which runs until September 30. “I didn’t go to a fashion school, my school was that movie.”

As such, Falbalas gets the prime spot at the two-floor showcase which welcomes visitors with a clip from the movie and a black-and-white tuxedo-style gown, inspired by the fashion show scene, from Gaultier’s 1999 collection. Marcel Rochas — Falbalas’ costume designer and inventor of the guêpière corset — gets his credit with an original '40s corset that’s juxtaposed against the prototype of the cone brassiere designed by Gaultier for Madonna’s 1990 Blonde Ambition Tour, a job the designer got when he approached the star after seeing her wear a black corset during a performance. 

“I said, ‘For the next show you do, it's not necessary to make a copy of my clothes,” he said. “‘You ask me, I will do even better.’”

The exhibition, which is a smaller version of the show that debuted at the Cinémathèque française in Paris in 2021, continues with a look at Gaultier’s cinematic oeuvre, with his costume sketches for films like The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover; The City of Lost Children; and the aforementioned The Fifth Element. (The latter includes a costume he designed for Prince who was supposed to star in the apocalyptic sci-fi film.) There are also some of the more fantastical costumes from the films he worked on, including a military-style khaki garment with motorcycle headlights over the breasts worn by Victoria Abril in Kika and the embroidered gown featuring a pearl design in the shape of pubic hair worn by Gael García Bernal in Bad Education, an evolution of a look Gaultier showed years prior on the runway on Naomi Campbell. 

“If [a director] asks me to make clothes for a movie, it’s not my story — it is their story. So I have to adapt my style… When I am doing my own collection, it's my own story… it’s my choice,” Gaultier said during a walkthrough of the exhibition when asked about the difference between designing for a film and a fashion show. “I am more spontaneous for my collection. Sometimes a mistake can be good because it can be something different that I didn't expect. [In film, it] is very strict.”

Memorable looks from Gaultier’s collections inspired by movies rather than worn in them round out the costumes: a James Bond-influenced black kilt from the men’s spring/summer 2006 show (the designer was one of the first couturiers to design skirts for men), a skull-adorned top and leather skirt from the Mad Max-themed fall/winter 1995 showcase, and a Clockwork Orange-esque harness look from Gaultier’s final spring 2020 collection. While the mariniere (a Gaultier signature), featuring a bare back with the illusion of the tattoos, takes influence from Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s movie about a sailor, Querelle, it also commemorates an important moment for Gaultier, who made waves at the time for eroticising men in his 1983 collection titled “L’Homme Objet” (Boy Toy).

“I was shocked by the woman [seen as an] object. Around me, I was seeing strong women, they were not the object at all. So it's why, when I did the men’s collection, I wanted to show the male object, because if there is a woman object at that point, it has to have a male object,” says Gaultier.

But while his transgressive designs that often featured nudity have earned Gaultier the moniker of L’Enfant Terrible, the designer says that he was simply depicting the freedom and societal changes that were happening around him. “When I did those things — like, for example, the corset for Madonna — I didn't do it on purpose so that people [would] speak about me,” says Gaultier. “I was showing only a reflection of what was going on, so it was not provocation… the time was changing, the people were changing.”

William Klein, whom Gaultier has long been inspired by and met in the ‘80s when the fashion photographer-filmmaker was commissioned to make Mode In France documentary, also gets a large chunk of the exhibit space. In particular, Klein’s 1996 film Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?, a parody of the fashion world, was a source of influence for Gaultier. “He didn’t like fashion. That’s why he did a very good movie,” Gaultier said. At one point, a clip from the film shows a model getting her arm cut while putting on an over-the-top dress made of sharp metal, a nod to Paco Rabanne’s 12 Unwearable Dresses show in 1966: “It was sarcastic which is good. We need critics in any profession.”

Alongside a video clip and costumes from the film, as well as photographers showing Space Age designs of Rabanne and André Courrèges, are futuristic pieces from Gaultier, including a metal cone corset and a breastplate look, inspired by Federico Fellini’s Satyricon and from the designer’s 2020 show that both celebrated his 50-year career and marked his final collection. (The brand now operates on a guest-designer model, with rotating creatives presenting under the Jean Paul Gaultier name.)

In the same room, Gaultier‘s first employer Cardin — whom Gaultier says he learned “freedom” from — gets a mention with a dress, made from synthetic “Cardine” fibre that could be moulded at a high temperature, worn by Lauren Bacall. It’s fitting not only because Cardin taught Gaultier to experiment and “to show fashion like a play, like a theatre, even if it was showing something that has to be a reality,” but because, in a full-circle moment, the exhibition is housed in a former property of Cardin, who resided in Lacoste.

While a good number of Gaultier’s looks fill the rooms, it’s interesting to see the subject of an exhibition give so much space to other creatives, ranging from filmmakers to photographers. Much like Gaultier handed over the reins of his brand to guest designers like Haider Ackermann, Glenn Martens, and, most recently, Simone Rocha — “It’s interesting to see their vision of Gaultier… to change some of my codes in their own way,” says Gaultier — he has no qualms about highlighting art that continues to inspire him today: “I love fashion so I love to see all the expressions.”