Jean Paul Gaultier: the designer whose clothes cross every border - Interview

Interview, Jan, 1994 by Richard Pandiscio

Jean Paul Gaultier and I first met for our interview during the New York fashion collections last fall. Later I discovered that there had been a small mishap, and I called him, nervously, to explain.

RICHARD PANDISCIO: Jean Paul, the tape recorder malfunctioned, and only a few minutes of our interview were taped. Actually, I malfunctioned--another chapter in my on-again, off-again love affair with technology. Do you have any on-again, off-again love affairs like that?

JEAN PAUL GAULTIER: I am really, really bad with technology, too. My VCR and TV are like big mysteries for me. When they don't work, [gasps] I don't know what to do! I think I have bad vibes for machines in my fingers.

RP: But you sure have great antennae for what is going on. I always think of you as a designer who maps the best things that can happen in the future. Is it true that your grandmother was a fortune-teller?

JPG: Yes, and I thought that what she did was perfectly normal. But when I told other people, they would react like, Oh, my god! Then I realized she was unique, you know? Clients would come to her place--she was, like, seventy years old when she was doing this--and she would put beauty masks on them, give them a massage, and sort of play tarot cards. You know, One, two, three, four, you will find a lover; one, two, three, four, you will live a long time. That kind of thing. And she would let me listen because I was a child, and what could I understand of what was happening? But I learned a lot about the connection between what people thought and how they looked and the impact it had on your life.

RP: Did she advise you?

JPG: She gave me confidence, I think. But advice, no.

RP: What kind of dreams did you have as a kid?

JPG: Terrible dreams. Dreams that I was in the street, and it was dark, and there were some people who were following me with a knife and putting that knife in my back. In reality, I needed to piss, and I was asleep.

RP: So that's why you grew up to design kilts!

JPG: [laughs] It's true. It's easier to piss in a kilt, but a man has to change his attitude to wear one.

RP: Did your grandmother influence you to focus on the future?

JPG: Yes, but in a good way. She was always telling me that I would do something that I would love and be successful. I didn't believe her at the time. I was very shy and not confident in myself. But I was not frightened by the future. So I'd say my grandmother gave me optimism. And I thank her for that.

RP: That's so interesting because not only do I think your new collection is extraordinarily beautiful, but I find it very moving emotionally: it is so full of optimism. Many other designers who have experimented with multicultural, multiethnic aesthetics usually seem to end up incorporating the references to other cultures as a part of their already established look. For you, that doesn't seem enough. You are really all about changing attitudes as well as giving us styles that make us feel right up to the moment. You say to Western men, Try wearing a skirt, experience wearing a sari. You say to those who have assumptions about what's outside their experience, Give those things or people you consider freakish a chance by wearing a shirt that makes you look like your body is tattooed. You seem to want more than passive tolerance, more than cultural tourism. Your collection and philosophy suggest active participation in the pursuit of harmony. It's like the expression, "Try walking in the other man's shoes, you might like how they fit."

JPG: Yes, because I believe in that. I never designed my collections as an abstract statement. For me, it was not like, Oh, I do that to be provactive. It is spontaneous because it reflects what I think, who I am, and how I live. I cannot do it any other way; what I am is a fashion designer, so the way for me to express a message of equality is to make clothes. When I am making a sari or clothes that look like they are from Asia, Africa, or India or wherever, I am proposing something: these clothes are beautiful; they come from other cultures, but we can wear them, too. When you wear these clothes and feel that they fit you perfectly, when you share the same style as the people who wear them every day, maybe you will start to like those people and feel tolerant toward them. It's the same with books that take us into other worlds. That's where tolerance begins.

RP: In the new collection you had some of your models wearing pieces of armor. To me this suggests a willingness to fight for your beliefs. Do you consider yourself an aggressive idealist?

JPG: [laughs] A bullfighter! I am a Taurus. [In New York, Gaultier had shown me his new tattoo: the face of a bull with a nose ring in blue and white ink.] But I don't consider myself an aggressive idealist--it is more about emotions. I try to translate what I sense from the street. So if you saw aggressive idealism in my shows, it means that this is what I felt from the people who are in the streets.

RP: I was impressed by the video monitors you had installed in the window at your runway show in Paris so that people could watch from the street. The crowd outside was big and very appreciative.