The Life of Jean-Paul Gaultier

Brut America

He helped popularize kilts for men and designed clothes for Madonna’s famous Blond Ambition tour — all without going to fashion school. This is the life of design icon Jean-Paul Gaultier.

Transcript

00:00I always thought it was nonsense, this image of the submissive woman.

00:05And it always shocked me, I always tried to show a kind of equality between man and woman.

00:10I was raised by women, by my grandmother and by my mother.

00:33And all these women were kind and loved me.

00:37And so I could see them, I could hear them, I found them very interesting.

00:43And I preferred to hear them, listen to them and see them live, than to have fun playing football.

00:51When I had my boobs cut short, it was because I had already done it to my bear.

01:03She was 7 or 8 years old.

01:05It corresponded to my desire to dress.

01:07But it was always a woman for me, always.

01:15The teacher, to punish me, seeing the drawing I had made of a woman with feathers and braces,

01:19she found it scandalous, she pinned it on my back, she made me go around other classes.

01:26And the boys, instead of saying, oh Gaultier, yes, the missing girl,

01:29they said to me, make me a drawing, make me a drawing.

01:31There I understood that in the end, I was no longer the missing girl when I drew.

01:36And that there, they smiled at me and asked me for things.

01:38And that in the end, I existed, I was not rejected.

01:41I was a fan and I still am.

01:49In the end, I think it gave me the energy, seeing his creations,

01:53I had the energy to try to do better, to say to myself, it's great.

01:57I saw, as I did not go to fashion school, I learned fashion through his creations.

02:11When I did my first fashion show, he called himself the object man.

02:36Because I said to myself, at least we go to equality.

02:39I tried to show a part of femininity in men.

02:50In 1987, we had decided, because everyone was obviously talking about the disease,

02:54we did not say AIDS at the time, we said it between us, but we did not say it like that to everyone.

02:58And so we had decided to see if we did not have something.

03:05So we got examined and it turns out that Francis was seropositive.

03:09So from that moment on, it was like the wait and the fear, because it was radical.

03:16It was, if you will, every time, like, what is it, what is it,

03:19there, that's it, it's starting, that's it, it's going to be the end.

03:22It was a race like that.

03:23It was a race like that.

03:53I cried with joy, happy to have participated in some way,

04:05to have accompanied him through my clothes, in these magical moments of happiness.

04:24I do not dream of doing anything else, I do not think fashion is not good enough for me.

04:27On the contrary, I find that with fashion we can say a lot of things,

04:30we can express ourselves, we can say what we think, we can say all our opinions.

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