In the first international exhibition devoted to the celebrated French couturier, the National Gallery of Victoria presented The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk, featuring seven galleries with more than 140 superbly crafted garments in addition to photographs, sketches, stage costumes, excerpts from runway shows, film, television, concerts and dance performances.
I almost missed this amazing exhibition, which ended the 8th of February, and I’m thrilled I didn’t. Despite not being a fashionista, I’ve been a fan of Gaultier’s work for about 20 years and this show was fantastic. I was excited to see his work. Here are a few of my favourites. All these photos were taken with my iPhone 6.
The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk at the National Gallery of Victoria.Virgins (or Madonnas) collection, haute couture, spring–summer 2007.Virgins (or Madonnas) collection, haute couture, spring–summer 2007.Virgins (or Madonnas) collection, haute couture, spring–summer 2007.The mannequins are animated. They look around, blink, smile, and so forth. The one of Gaultier welcomes you to the show.As a boy, he was fascinated by corsets.Reworking the early twentieth-century corsets and 1940s waistcinchers dug out of his grandmother’s closets, he went on to create new classics, such as the cone bra and underwear as outerwear.Far from being an instrument of torture imprisoning women’s bodies, for Gaultier, his corset embody a new feminine power.Many stars have worn various iterations of his corsets with concentrically topstitched bra cups, including, famously, Madonna during her 1990 Blond Ambition World Tour.Madonna wore this 3D leather cage corset with conical breasts during the MDNA World Tour, 2012.In the early 1970s Gaultier had his first look at the styles adopted by the punks of London.Gaultier found inspiration and new materials in the energy of London’s streets and the glam rock movement.A moving runway showcase from various Gaultier collections.The Skin Deep gallery.The Skin Deep gallery.Some of Gaultier’s more scandalous work.The high-waisted skirt with ‘bare breast’ suspenders, shown at the top left, was worn by Madonna in Jean Paul Gaultier’s benefit runway show for amFAR (The Foundation for AIDS Research) in Los Angeles on 24 September 1992.The Urban Jungle gallery showcases work inspired by what Gaultier calls the melting pot of the new Paris.The Urban Jungle gallery.
With more than 140 garments on display plus design illustrations, photographs, and other props, you can imagine that this blog entry hardly does it justice. It was impressive.
Fascinating stuff.
xxx Hugs xxx