Viva Mexico! Jean-Paul Gaultier Paris Couture 2010 review

Swinging down the runway in a full red skirt singing "La Paloma", Arielle Dombasle, the French actress and wife of the celebrity philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy (only in France! … the Brits have to make do with celebrity chefs) brought Jean-Paul Gaultier's couture show to a roaring close. The audience entered into the spirit and clapped in unison when the singer was joined by Gaultier himself (in his trademark black, and not singing).

It was the end of a very Gaultier event. An iconoclast with a great sense of humour (hands up anyone who has ever seen a couturier apart from him so much as smiling, let alone laughing) and the confidence to send up couture – the thing he loves – Gaultier's show is alwayslike a flash of light in the serious business of making clothes important. His outrageousness makes us smile, and even laugh out loud.


Photo: © Jason Lloyd-Evans

He always works to a theme and this time it was Mexico – just made for high-camp high jinks - and he worked it for all it was worth. Huge and marvellously inventive sombreros, incredibly wide Gaucho pants, flared jeans with what seemed in all the exciteme-t to be hundreds of brass buttons running down the seams, cowboy boot-shoes
and palm leaf fan pleating made sure we didn't forget for a moment that this was Mexico with a very big M. It was fun but it was also serious in that the clothes were superbly tailored and would adapt to a very chic modernity that could only be from Paris and, indeed, Gaultier himself.

I am a huge fan because I love confidence and that was what this show was all about. The confidence to make a really individual statement and have fun whilst doing it.




Photos © Jason Lloyd-Evans