Jean Paul Gaultier, Rule Breaker

Posted by Lesley Scott Jun 25, 2007

The Rule Breakers is the theme of the next Night of Stars gala on October 25th in NYC, for which the Fashion Group International has anointed Jean Paul Gaultier as the belle of the ball. At NYC’s swanky Cipriani 42nd Street, Gaultier will receive the Superstar Award in honor of his many decades of challenging the fashion mainstream…a typically all-black clad cabal (literally & figuratively) which could really use a healthy challenge every now and then.

Gaultier established and cemented his reputation as the “bad boy” of the fashion world with his eponymous design house which turned 30 this year, sticking men in skirts for one collection, in another sending fabulously politically incorrect Hasidic Chic down the runway complete with sidelocks attached to the models’ temples. He has also outfitted eyebrow-raising rocker Marilyn Manson, designed the wardrobe for Peter Greenaway’s shocking & surreal The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, and of course, put Madonna into the infamous cone bra costume for her 1990 Blonde Ambition tour. "Jean Paul Gaultier embodies the spirit of this year's event," Margaret Hayes, FGI's president, told WWD. "His rule-breaking design philosophy has secured him a unique place in fashion and identifies him as a true superstar." (Previous recipients have included Burt Tansky, Valentino, Giorgio Armani, Donna Karan, Suzy Menkes, Tom Ford and the Lauder family.)

Even Gaultier’s training was less than orthodox; the self-taught 18-year old sent sketches to Pierre Cardin who hired him as an assistant in 1970, later noting: "From your first collection in 1976, you have challenged the criteria of taste and bad taste.You have shocked, troubled and irritated while enjoying yourself clouding the issue with an ambivalent and interchangeable wardrobe." (SAWF News) Or, as Time Magazine more succinctly put it way back in 1984: “clothes for yucks and clothes for bucks”.

- via WWD