Q&A Jean Paul Gaultier

Jean Paul Gaultier at the Fashion Group International’s 24th Annual Night of Stars. (Evan Agostini/Associated Press)

Jean Paul Gaultier made a funny entrance at the Fashion Group International’s Night of Stars benefit in New York last night, arriving arm-in-arm with Lauren Bacall and Kerry Washington. Ms. Washington wore a rust colored dress of lace and tulle by Gaultier, but Ms. Bacall, his guest, stuck with her customary black pantsuit. She’d have looked great in one of Mr. Gaultier’s pirate hats from the spring collection, but Ms. Bacall, I suppose, knows what works best for her.
The theme in selecting the honorees of the night was “rule breakers.” When Mr. Gaultier accepted his award, the audience went wild, mostly because he made a bawdy remark by calling himself a “breaker” of another sort, one unsuitable to print here, but you get the drift.

Yesterday, I asked Mr. Gaultier about his recent work and how the times have changed his appetite to provoke. (The following Q&A includes excerpts from that interview, which has been edited for space.) — Eric Wilson

Q: You’ve been doing so much work in the past five years that has been phenomenal in what it represents, but I want to hear from you about the impact of Gaultier on fashion right now.

A: I don’t know exactly what is my impact, but I can say I am doing fashion my own way. I am quite lucky because I do not have much influence from big groups that try to tell me to do things. I am quite on my own. Of course, evaluating, I think, is good. But the impact of Gaultier on fashion, I don’t know. It’s not for me to say. The things we are selling, people are wearing, so I am very pleased with that.

Q: Well, one example of that influence is that,as we showed in the fashion section today, underwear is all over the runways again, and it’s a look you really gave credibility to. Why do you think women are interested in dressing with their underwear exposed?

A: I think men also do the same thing. You know that T-shirts are underwear in reality, no? The T-shirt became like a new, modern shirt. Maybe it is because of the mentality of change. Like in architecture, also, there are things normally you would not cover, that you didn’t show before, and now you do show. Look at the scandal it made with the Centre Pompidou in Paris because all the architecture that was inside is now on the outside. Lots of things now are inside out, and maybe because people feel more confident. It is not something blasphemous or something to be ashamed of.

Q: It’s funny that you say that, because there were reports on a survey this week that people are more stressed and less confident then ever. So why would the underwear look come back now?

A: (Laughing) It’s a revival. There are moments you get to when you are feeling too much. People are fed up with something when it becomes more and more popular. It becomes a cycle, and now people want the contrary. They go back, but they never go back exactly the same way, even if the looks are similar to what was before, they cannot be exactly the same.

Q: What about you? Do you work differently with a collection or a theme than you have done in the past?

A: To be honest, it would be more cool if each time was the same, because then you won’t feel stressed. Sometimes there is no theme at all, or sometimes at the end there is not just one theme. Always my collections are made of different influences. Sometimes at the beginning I have one idea of how it should be. I remember one time on the street, I was visiting New York, and coming out from a big library there were a lot of Jewish people with all the costumes.

Q: You mean the Hasidic collection? [In fall 1993 Mr. Gaultier caused enormous controversy when he showed models with coats and hairstyles styled after the traditional Hasidic attire.]

A: I was so shocked by the beauty of them going out of the library. I felt so strongly that my collection will be like that. At the same time, I saw something else that made me focused on that, a very beautiful movie called “Pain et Chocolat,” about an Italian guy who immigrated to Switzerland and wanted to be integrated completely. He tried everything, even bleached his hair, to become like a Switzerland guy. Then there was a football competition he was watching in a cafe, with all these people, and when Italy scores, he was like ‘Whaaaa!’ Everybody was looking at him like who is this guy? What I felt about that movie is that when you try to change yourself to pretend to be somebody else, you don’t feel comfortable. So to see all those Hasidic people coming out with their costumes like that, I think how strong it was, how strong you can be and not to have to try at all to escape. It is beautiful to be what you are.
Even myself, when I presented that collection, I was a little scared that people should take it that Gaultier, who’s always supposed to be funny, was making a joke. That was not the purpose. It was the beauty that was very inspiring, and that is what I wanted to show.

Q: Is it still possible for you to be controversial? Do you find it as simple to engage your audience as you may have in the past?

A: The point was never to break the rules and things like that. I never did it as something to be known for. When I did the skirts for men, it was not to provoke and shock the people, it was only because I thought that people were changing — that men were changing — and their views were changing so that it was no longer a shame to express femininity. Is it feminine to dress to be seductive? Why should seduction only be feminine? To me it felt natural that people were ready to change. It was something I was doing innocently — not completely innocently, knowing it could provoke — but I did not do it to provoke. I thought other people were thinking the same thing of wanting something else.

Q: What were you thinking with the pieces in the spring collection, the pirates in camouflage?

A: Camouflage is supposed to be for military, so I did something romantic with military. It is a very ’70s message, which is right now. I used it in a way more romantic, with more embroidery that was historical, not hysterical. You don’t see it too much, at first. It’s like a surprise when you come closer to it. It’s like, it’s like…

Q: Camouflaged?

A: Exactly, the camouflage is camouflaged by itself. It’s a chameleon collection.

Q: With your collections for Hermès and the couture, has it made you rethink how you design now that you are responsible for so many collections each year?

A: Do you ask me if it is too much work?

Q: Well, is it too much work, or not enough?

A: Work is good when you see and you do. Sometimes I like the experience of things that are not just fashion, but also working in the cinema, or with Madonna. It is something that gives me an adventure, inspiration and energy.
When I do my own collection authentic soccer jerseys, I am under my own control, which means I am the director, like the director for a movie. I do the scenario, the script, the directing. I’m not acting, but violà. When I do something for someone else like Hermès, they are their own scenario, and me, I am making the movie, but with the script and scenario written by somebody else. I put it in my own way. When I am with Madonna or Almodóvar, they have their own stories, and I try to put myself into them. I see how they are organized, how they treat things. It teaches me things. I still learn a lot. I still have a lot to learn.