Fashion Interview

‘She died for me twice!’ he laughs.Thanks to her, Gaultier had a fashion

epiphany aged eight. ‘My grandmother let me watch everything on TV, and I saw a programme about the Folies Bergère. The next day, I sketched a showgirl and my teacher caned me, attached the sketch to my back and made me tour the classrooms.’

Far from acting as a deterrent, the incident showed the young Gaultier a path to acceptance. ‘I’d been rejected by the other boys – I was not good at anything, always alone – but, suddenly, they were smiling, laughing.’ He clutches his breast in mock histrionics. ‘It was the only way I could live in that brittle world, to be loved.’

Looking back over his career, Gaultier identifies the 80s as his favourite decade – in work and in love. Francis Menuge, his personal and professional partner, died from an Aids- related illness in 1990. Menuge was a huge part of Jean Paul Gaultier the brand – so much so that Gaultier credits Menuge with giving him the confidence to start his label in the first place.

After Menuge’s death, the designer consid-ered abandoning his career, only ploughing on

The cult of JPG

Corsets, kilts and cones

at the thought of what his lover’s reaction would have been. What followed was a flourish of creativity – Gaultier’s collaboration with Madonna bloomed, skyrocketing his profile; he opened his couture house and joined Hermès as creative director.

‘When my boyfriend died, I needed some other experience,’ he says. ‘So I did couture, I worked in the movies and, of course, there was Hermès. I come from the suburbs, so to be on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré! I loved my time there, but now I want to focus on my own work and my own life.’

So does Gaultier realise how radical he was back when he featured the obese, the tattooed and the transgendered on his catwalks? ‘It’s what I lived,’ he shrugs. ‘I felt different so I understood other people’s differences.’ His autumn/winter 2011 collection shown in Paris in March, featuring legendary forty-something French comedienne Valérie Lemercier alongside the supers, proves he’s still fond of mixing it up a bit.

I ask whether the show – in which mod-els swanned around in grey wigs – was inspired by his own advancing years and his dwelling on the past for the exhibition. ‘It could be!’ he hoots. ‘But, no. It’s about the elegance of a time when a woman didn’t want to look like a girl but a lady. For me, the idea of getting old is not bad because I have the image of my grandmother – she is not alive, but she is still alive in my head.’

‘Are you sure she’s not alive?’ I demand. A conspiratorial look steals across the

designer’s face. ‘Well…’

Madonna’s show-stopping Blonde Ambition costume

The iconic corset perfume bottle

Agyness Deyn stars in the Ma Dame ad

Sailor stripes and tattoos are enduring motifs

Hosting Channel 4’s Eurotrash in the 90s

With his cancan-inspired couture

Step inside the glamorous world of fashion every month with