Jean Paul Gaultier x Nicolas di Felice

[perhydrol]

such an obvious (boring) choice!
they all come from the same parisian clan.
because Gaultier finds his guests mostly (Simone Rocha and Chitose Abe were the only exceptions) in the same small pool of designers i would have prefered this time Natacha Ramsay-Levi.

BTW: Does anybody know what she's up to at the moment. I miss her designs...

Natacha has released her collaboration with A.P.C. and the second drop of her collection for Ecco in the past three days.

 

[Lola701]

such an obvious (boring) choice!
they all come from the same parisian clan.
because Gaultier finds his guests mostly (Simone Rocha and Chitose Abe were the only exceptions) in the same small pool of designers

At the same time, it’s his brand…
It’s only fitting for him to choose designers he is following or interested in and not those we miss or deemed as « more » whatever.
He is following, obviously, a particular scene. I don’t expect him to choose an American or a Italy-based designer at this point.
Maybe quoting fashion made him more selective in what he is following.

 

[tourbillions]

he should make iris van herpen x gaultier happen. It could either be the funniest thing or the most amazing thing to happen.

 

[gallianostan]

he should make iris van herpen x gaultier happen.

 

[tricotineacetat]

The list of designers appointed for this marketing spectacle are as of late as exciting as when H&M announces their next designer collaboration. The spark is gone, why would you want in Haute Couture a designer who has earned recognition mainly for their commercial success when these collections are made-to-order anyway? Shouldn't the aim be more to produce a strong artistic expression, a spectacle that stirs a conversation? I don't think Dossena, Di Felice or Rocha provide any of that.

I don't have to completely love Haider Ackermann's collection to understand his announcement created a much different interest as he was without a job at the time and people considered it an audition for something following the positive receipt of his Couture collab. From that perspective I think having Tisci or Theyskens do it would make a lot of sense or even better to bring back a designer once more out of retirement much in the way Dries Van Noten did it with Lacroix - It's a one-off after all, under amazing working conditions.

 

[Cocteau Stone]

The list of designers appointed for this marketing spectacle are as of late as exciting as when H&M announces their next designer collaboration.

Funny you mention this because Balmain, Rabanne and Simone Rocha have all done H&M collaborations. With the building hype and aura around Felice, wouldn't be surprised to see Courreges do the same. Same goes for Sacai but perhaps with UNIQLO rather than H&M.

 

[Lola701]

The list of designers appointed for this marketing spectacle are as of late as exciting as when H&M announces their next designer collaboration. The spark is gone, why would you want in Haute Couture a designer who has earned recognition mainly for their commercial success when these collections are made-to-order anyway? Shouldn't the aim be more to produce a strong artistic expression, a spectacle that stirs a conversation? I don't think Dossena, Di Felice or Rocha provide any of that.

I think part of the lack of excitement is also due to the fact that he is announcing new designers for every season. It’s a bit like what Richemont did with AZ Factory before having Lutz involved.

Couture is presented in less than 4 months. The last collection was presented 2 months ago.

Having so short delays between what is supposed to be the highest form of expression of creativity and craftsmanship in fashion can make it as disposable as a Masstige collab or any other drops.

So adding the delays to the constant change can be tiring at the end.

I strongly believe that designers should have presented 2 Haute Couture collections.

And it’s so weird that I wonder if clients don’t have that kind of FOMO suddenly plus it’s a marketing exercise where it’s almost impossible to measure the impact.

The house must be doing well business-wise but there’s nothing attached to the Couture show. There’s no capsule RTW collection or special edition of the fragrances. They don’t have brand ambassadors so the presence of Gaultier has not increased on the RC…
There’s a show and on to the next one.

 

[Phuel]

^^^Doesn’t the (hype) of these younger guest designers somewhat also push the merch that the label has out that clearly targets this new consumer?

The list of designers appointed for this marketing spectacle are as of late as exciting as when H&M announces their next designer collaboration. The spark is gone, why would you want in Haute Couture a designer who has earned recognition mainly for their commercial success when these collections are made-to-order anyway? Shouldn't the aim be more to produce a strong artistic expression, a spectacle that stirs a conversation? I don't think Dossena, Di Felice or Rocha provide any of that.

I don't have to completely love Haider Ackermann's collection to understand his announcement created a much different interest as he was without a job at the time and people considered it an audition for something following the positive receipt of his Couture collab. From that perspective I think having Tisci or Theyskens do it would make a lot of sense or even better to bring back a designer once more out of retirement much in the way Dries Van Noten did it with Lacroix - It's a one-off after all, under amazing working conditions.

Frankly, Haider is the odd man out of all the guest designers thus far. He is so above the others, it’s not even fair. None of that matters of course, because the strategic trajectory of this project is to align with a new generation of fashion fans that connect with the relevance of Julien/Olivier Rousteing/Nicolas di Felice and not so much with the superior talents of Olivier Thyeskens and Riccardo Tisci. Gaultier’s selection is carefully deliberate to optimize his relevance by association, and the excitement for Haider on TFS is unfortunately more of an exception rather than the rule. I’d argue that Olivier Rousteing was likely the most popular guest amongst the casual fashion fan. Like Gaultier, guest designers should be as strong in their vision of men as they are of wome, even if the project is really not for menswear. And for that alone, Tom Ford/Rei Kawakubo/Miuccia Prada/Riccardo Tisci would be my ideal collaborators, But the reality of it is these Greats are far too talented for what Gaultier Haute Couture has become. Everybody has lowered their standards in this current fashion era, including Gaultier.

Iris may be a joke as a contender on TFS, but the casual fashion fan would go for her if they had a choice… And knowing her— it would predictably be cone bras worn with her under-the-sea amoeba swirls of capes/miniskirts/mermaid trains all in a coral color-palette.

 

[tricotineacetat]

I think part of the lack of excitement is also due to the fact that he is announcing new designers for every season. It’s a bit like what Richemont did with AZ Factory before having Lutz involved.

Couture is presented in less than 4 months. The last collection was presented 2 months ago.

Having so short delays between what is supposed to be the highest form of expression of creativity and craftsmanship in fashion can make it as disposable as a Masstige collab or any other drops.

So adding the delays to the constant change can be tiring at the end.

I strongly believe that designers should have presented 2 Haute Couture collections.

And it’s so weird that I wonder if clients don’t have that kind of FOMO suddenly plus it’s a marketing exercise where it’s almost impossible to measure the impact.

The house must be doing well business-wise but there’s nothing attached to the Couture show. There’s no capsule RTW collection or special edition of the fragrances. They don’t have brand ambassadors so the presence of Gaultier has not increased on the RC…
There’s a show and on to the next one.

I agree, the turnover is too quick, even if by the industry's standards it's 'just' 2 collections a year. Yet I think it sets a very short-lived narrative and results in most designers to come up with very two-dimensional interpretations of Gaultier - We all know what a difference it can make for a designer to get a bit more settled with a new house, let's not forget most of these designers have never before done Haute Couture. Also, by the speed of these appointments, we can assume the choice of decent designers available to be exploited in a few years - I'm curious as to what will happen with the JPG fashion brand at this point!

When we look at Haider Ackermann's collection, we could see how his collection generated significantly more response from clients and celebrities wearing the clothes. It was really a success by the standard of how many sightings these looks generated - The same with Olivier Theyskens' patchworked confections from the 'couture trilogy' he presented, from a PR perspective, he got a lot of worth out of putting these dresses on the right people!

I find it lacking to think that appointing 'Gen-Z designers' necessarily need to result in better sales than those of an older guard when there are no proofs for that. We keep looking at collections of these designers born in the 1970ies (who aren't really that old!) from the perspective of today, ignoring that they also moved on from there.

 

[LadyJunon]

Gaultier by Di Felice tomorrow at 18:30

 

[LadyJunon]

Nicolas di Felice on his collection for Gaultier that will be presented later this evening:

“He Was the Precursor of Everything We See Now”—Nicolas Di Felice Gets Candid About His Jean Paul Gaultier Couture Collaboration.

BY MARK HOLGATE
June 25, 2024

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 cult 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 an 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 probably said too much. (You also get a little sneak peak below!)

What we can talk about is the route Di Felice took to arrive at his Gaultier couture. From the minute he started work, it quickly became apparent to him, he says, that what would be challenging was, “deciding where I wanted to go—because obviously I really dug into the archives big, big time. I mean, I have loved his work for a long time, so I knew lots of pieces. I even found images of Jean Paul’s first, first collection—he doesn’t even have that many pictures of him himself. All of a sudden, I was seeing a show from the ’70s which was really amazing. And he did so much that was interesting. Not just the couture, but Junior Gaultier, Soleil, the jeans…. He was so prolific that I didn’t want to be inspired by only one collection, or a certain iconic look. I thought about what really touched me, and what made sense to the way I work. As I did this collection, I learned about that every day.”

What Di Felice knew from the outset was that he himself was not, he said, “a fan of decoration.” Which meant that what so many of us think of as haute couture—insane levels of beading and feathering and embroidering and all that jazz—are really not part of Di Felice’s vision. Again, without giving a whole lot away, there will be some embellishment going on, with the aforementioned hook and eye to the fore—he laughed that the Gaultier studios were buying all that they could lay their hands on. But really what his couture—along with his work at Courrèges—is about is the elemental power of fabric draped onto the body: the alchemical reaction that happens when the two-dimensional meets the three-dimensional. Some of what Di Felice has done might at first glance seem almost like nothing—I’m thinking of one dress (at the time of writing, look 11)—but of course it’s not; it’s quite, quite something, by virtue of all the work to make the outward (the gazar) and the inward (the boning construction) look absolutely effortless. Over the Zoom, Di Felice undid the dress, and it opened like an exhale—as natural and as effortless as breathing: a beautiful piece of workmanship.

“Most of the patterns are really geometric shapes,” Di Felice said. “I am going to show you look 1”—he ran across the studio and pointed the phone to the floor, where it was laid out, utterly flat on the ground—“that’s the feeling I am going for. You can do nice drawings—you can draw, and draw, and draw—but you want to do something outstanding [for couture], and the magic can come from just a simple square of fabric. It’s going back to geometry; it’s a never-ending principle, because it gives you a lot to play with.” One collection he did look at was “Les Touristes Japones au Louvre” of Spring 1999. “The set was a huge red circle, super radical,” said Di Felice. “It’s simple, which I like, but most of all, it’s the amazing way he cut that collection that I like; even if some were really simple gestures, they really touched me.” (Another collection he was looking at, for reasons that will become evident, was Gaultier’s fall of 1986/87, dubbed “Constructivism.” Ditto the “Women Among Women” collection of Fall 1989.)

Of course, when one guests as the designer responsible for the couture of Gaultier, you're following not only in the footsteps of the man himself, but all those who have sat in the couturier seat for one season. “I’m not the first person to do this collaboration, and it was important for me to work around things that are perhaps less-known,” Di Felice said. “Jean Paul never stopped searching and expressing, and it would be a bit predictable to always go back to the same things. The designers who went before me are really talented and have amazing taste, and because we are the same age, [I thought] maybe we’d be drawn to the same things, but that thought didn’t last long.” Di Felice, an inveterate team player, also praised the Gaultier atelier teams for being so brilliant to work with. “They’re passionate and nice people,” he said. “[Always working with new designers] demands a lot of flexibility and intelligence and patience. It’s [a lot] to change artistic direction every six months. I was really curious about so many of the techniques. I learned a lot about myself, and my tastes. And thank God what I wanted to work on [of Gaultier’s past] hadn’t been that touched.”

One less-expected thing that guided him was that Gaultier song, “How To Do That.” “I became obsessed with this one line in the song—‘There is a new way, a new way, a new way’,” Di Felice said. “I don’t want people to think I am saying that I am going to do [my Gaultier couture] in a new way—not at all! It’s something that has just run in my mind since the first day I started because I don’t want to disappoint him. Or disappoint myself.”

Vogue

An image of one of the looks from the collection:

Vogue