{"id":3002,"date":"2018-05-17T18:08:37","date_gmt":"2018-05-17T16:08:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/?p=3002"},"modified":"2025-10-23T15:02:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T13:02:09","slug":"lhomme-objet-gaultiers-male-gaze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/3002\/lhomme-objet-gaultiers-male-gaze\/","title":{"rendered":"L’Homme Objet: Gaultier’s Male Gaze"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photography by Johan Sandberg<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jean Paul Gaultier doesn\u2019t have a menswear line anymore but most of today\u2019s best menswear lines have a bit of Jean Paul Gaultier.<\/p>\n

The migration of avant-garde ideas from the university, the art world and intellectual bohemia towards mass commerce and prime-time television marks the cycle of their cultural acceptance, of what is generally understood to be \u201cmainstreaming.\u201d The people you consider marginal end up shaping the reality of your children. The drag queen your father\u2019s generation had locked up now sells lipstick to your daughter. Progressive minds find this is proof of the positive evolution of society. Which is why it\u2019s so disturbing to hear Jean Paul Gaultier say: \u201cI feel that if I were starting now I couldn\u2019t have done what I had done at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gaultier twisted the gendered poles of fashion\u2014tailoring and corsetry\u2014into a helix of artful subversion. In the 80s and 90s, nobody said \u201cgender-fluid\u201d outside the ivied gates of a few dozen American and European universities. The idea didn\u2019t really exist in the popular imagination\u2014at least not in words. The clumsy term of the day was \u201candrogyny\u201d which suggested some sort of static indistinctness of gender traits. Gaultier\u2019s first menswear show\u2014called Homme Objet \u2013 Toy Boy\u2014explicitly invited the sexual objectification of men. Gaultier\u2019s sensibility comported its own radicalized \u201cMale Gaze\u201d\u2014a critical and admiring focus on masculinity and its trappings that utterly revolutionized menswear. He was kind enough to open his archives to us and respond to a few of our questions.<\/p>\n

ON MENSWEAR<\/p>\n

MATTHEW HICKS: It was widely reported in the press that you stopped RTW and menswear because, as you told the Daily Mail in 2015: \u201cWe\u2019re making clothes that aren\u2019t destined to be worn.\u201d Speaking specifically about menswear, when did you first start to feel that? Can you think of an anecdote or an example of where you were when you reached this conclusion?<\/p>\n

JEAN PAUL GAULTIER: It wasn\u2019t something that came to me at a specific moment. It was more something that was brewing in me for a while. I have increasingly felt that it is fashion that buys fashion\u2014more precisely, people who work in fashion who wear the clothes, who buy the magazines, the celebrities that are gifted everything, the influence of big groups. All of that was a far cry from my beginnings and from the fashion that I knew, so the moment came to stop the ready to wear. Couture allows me to stay in fashion, to experiment, but leaves me enough time for other projects that I am interested in.<\/p>\n

MH: Do you still think that there is too much menswear being produced?<\/p>\n

JPG: I think that there is too much of everything being produced. We are in the moment of crisis but at the same time there is more and more fast fashion, the collections are actually getting bigger. I think that our whole model of consumerism needs to be rethought and not just in menswear.<\/p>\n

MH: I remember watching a report on one of your collections on television\u2014sometime in the 90s when I was a teenager in America\u2014in which skirts appeared on men. I distinctly remember my mother and her husband sort of clucking their tongue in shock. Today, an acceptance of gender fluidity is the norm in my milieu. What sort of challenges and advantages do you think are presented by this relatively new, fluid conception of gender?<\/p>\n

JPG: I always wanted to show that women can be strong and that men can be weak and sensitive. But I feel that we are not really there yet. The world is becoming more liberal in some ways but also very reactionary in others. The freedom that we knew in the 70s and 80s doesn\u2019t exist anymore; I feel that if I were starting now I couldn\u2019t have done what I had done at the time.<\/p>\n

MH: Do you collect pieces from other designers?<\/p>\n

JPG: No, but I wear them\u2014I wear Margiela, Comme des Gar\u00e7ons, Junya Watanabe\u2026<\/p>\n

MH: What is something that can make even a beautiful man unattractive?<\/p>\n

JPG: Attitude. The beauty comes from the inside.<\/p>\n

MH: Would you be able to dress someone you found ideologically or morally repulsive if they corresponded to your physical ideal?<\/p>\n

JPG: To conceive something especially for them no, however when I had boutiques I couldn\u2019t control who bought my clothes. That is not my role.<\/p>\n

MH: A lot has been written about your female muses. But what about the men? Who were the men who inspired you? Who inspires you today?<\/p>\n

JPG: First of all, my partner Francis. He had this dream for us of making a fashion empire. I would have been happy designing anywhere as long as I could design but he had a vision. Then there is Tanel who still works with me and who was in almost all my menswear shows for 20 years, not just a beautiful person but a beautiful soul. I was influenced by rock stars like David Bowie, I loved Michel Polnareff when I was a teenager\u2026 All of them had an impact on me.<\/p>\n

MH: Are there decades or tropes in menswear you find unlovable?<\/p>\n

JPG: The good taste of one time is the bad taste of another\u2026<\/p>\n

ON MEDIA AND CULTURE<\/p>\n

MH: In the 90s you co-hosted Eurotrash, which is where I saw Boy George and Yvette Horner blissfully camping it up at her villa somewhere in France. At the time, Eurotrash was about the only place on television that celebrated kitsch and camp and sexy silliness. You have said that, as a child, you had a passion for television. As with fashion collections, television\u2019s offerings have divided and multiplied into a chaos of choice. Do you watch television? What and why? Does it inspire you or depress you?<\/p>\n

JPG: I still watch a lot of television but I am probably less influenced by it than before. I like Dancing with the Stars and The Voice\u2026 I can\u2019t make myself watch series that everyone is doing now and for films, I like to go to the cinema and see them on the big screen.<\/p>\n

ON YOUNG TALENT<\/p>\n

MH: You famously had no formal training. Rather, you sent sketches to major houses and your talent was instantly spotted. Do you think the same thing would be possible today? How do you find young collaborators today and how are they different from when you started out?<\/p>\n

JPG: Celebrity can now come very quickly and last for not very long. I feel that the young designers are less willing to design \u201cin the style of\u201d, which is what I did when I worked at Pierre Cardin or Jean Patou. But there are many talented young people around.<\/p>\n

ON INFLUENCE AND APPROPRIATION<\/p>\n

MH: You were one of the first designers to look to the streets of Paris\u2014with all of their ethnic and class diversity, and mix up those codes, channelling them into some of your most famous collections. Today, a designer inspired by, say, Mongolia (I\u2019m thinking of your sublime FW 94\/95 RTW) has to tread very carefully or else he might face accusations of \u201ccultural appropriation,\u201d described as \u201cadoption of the elements of a minority culture by members of the dominant culture.\u201d What advice would you have on this subject? Where is the line drawn between influence and appropriation?<\/p>\n

JPG: As far as I am concerned, I have always treated the different cultures with the utmost respect.<\/p>\n

ON CORSETRY<\/p>\n

MH: I think that if there are two garments associated with you they must surely be the Marini\u00e8re pullover and the classic French corset. How did you come to make your first corsets? What is the most difficult thing about creating a corset? What is something a non-couturier would not know about corsets?<\/p>\n

JPG: The corset was this mysterious flesh coloured object that I had found in my grandmother\u2019s drawer when I was a boy. She explained to me that women used to drink vinegar and tighten the corset at the moment of the contraction to have the smallest possible waist. It was a fascinating story for a little boy. Afterwards, in the early 80s I saw a musical on Broadway, Nine, and there was a scene where all the women were in nude dressing gowns and lingerie and somehow the image of the corset came back and my first corset dress was born. But the corset for me was always something to empower women, to make them seductive on their own terms and not a means of submission.<\/p>\n

ON GENERALLY HELD MISCONCEPTIONS<\/p>\n

MH: What is something that you often read about yourself in the press that is false or distorted and annoys you? What terms are used to describe you that you find inappropriate?<\/p>\n

JPG: I don\u2019t mind what the press writes about me\u2014not even \u201cthe enfant terrible\u201d bothers me.<\/p>\n

ON ANONYMITY AND CELEBRITY<\/p>\n

MH: It\u2019s been many years since you could simply walk down a street in Paris without being recognized. Is it difficult to observe and be inspired\u2014tranquilly\u2014when one is very famous? Does your celebrity limit your ability to blend in and absorb visual information?<\/p>\n

JPG: I can still walk down the street in Paris or anywhere else for that matter. Yes, I am recognized but it doesn\u2019t limit my ability to observe. My curiosity has stayed the same and I still look at what happens in the street.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

Originally published in Dapper Dan magazine, issue 17, March 2018. Interview by Matthew Hicks.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jean Paul Gaultier doesn\u2019t have a menswear line anymore but most of today\u2019s best menswear lines have a bit of Jean Paul Gaultier. The migration of avant-garde ideas from the university, the art world and intellectual bohemia towards mass commerce and prime-time television marks the cycle of their cultural acceptance, of what is generally understood […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[33,38],"class_list":["post-3002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issue-17","tag-fashion","tag-interviews"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8QZgE-Mq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3002"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3020,"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3002\/revisions\/3020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}