Fashion designer college

INGRID SISCHY: Hi, Jean Paul. It's nice to hear your voice.

JEAN PAUL GAULTIER: You, too. I feel as if you are just next to me. It's the quality of the American phones, I think, because the French ones are not so good.

IS: [both laugh] I want to talk to you about Paris for our special issue. Jean Paul, in America, if a 12-year-old boy were to say, "I want to be a couturier," as you did, his parents would probably raise their eyebrows. How did yours react?

JPG: I think I was very lucky. My parents were modest people, but they knew someone in our neighborhood who was a painter. His wife was an illustrator for a magazine that covered fashion. I was doing my own collections, you know, sketching dresses and things like that, and when I was like maybe 13, 14, my parents showed them to her to see what she thought. She said, "Oh yes, go on, because they're quite good." So my parents said, "You have to go on to study." I studied until the age of about 18, and sent my sketches to different couturiers, but only to have pocket money. On the day of my 18th birthday, I received a call from Pierre Cardin, who asked me, "What are you doing?" I said, "I am going to college." He replied, "OK. So come to work with me."

IS: What did you think?

JPG: It was marvelous. I was both surprised and not surprised. It felt almost normal, like destiny. After Cardin, I went to Jean Patou, bon. I saw there the old sellers for the couture ladies. That's where there were so many rules on what was chic and not chic, what you could do and what you could not do. I'd think, My God, what are they saying? For example, I was wearing horse boots, like for uh...

IS:... Riding boots?

JPG: [laughs] Yes, I was wearing riding boots one day, and they said, "What? You have your horse here?" They made jokes like that; they were terrible. I reacted against all those kinds of rules. I truly enjoy proving that in fashion it doesn't mean anything to say, "That is good, and that is bad."

IS: You began as a rebel--you still are one. Do you think that there's an absence of rebellion in the air?

JPG: Tout a fait! But I think we will have more rebellion, because if it is all so controlled it is so boring.

IS: I want to ask you something. It feels as though what really happened to Paris is what also happened to us in New York, which is sometime around '85 the effect of losing so many people to AIDS started to take its grip.

JPG: I am sure that it influenced everyone, myself included. My boyfriend died at the end of the '80s because of AIDS. It has affected, I think, all of the world, but in fashion there was a lot of loss in the '80s and early '90s.

IS: Can you summarize your own experience in fashion in Paris through the '80s and the '90s, once you had your own house.

JPG: For me it was the dream of my life to do this work. I could do what I loved to do. It was a time of excitement and freedom, and also there was a hysteria [in the air] about fashion. There was intensity because the Japanese had arrived and added a lot of excitement. It was not about marketing and managing and all that. In the '80s the word was creativity. In the '90s, the word, the goal, was business.

IS: How interesting then that at the end of the '90s you chose to start your own couture house.

JPG: Initially I thought about making just one couture collection. I'd always dreamed of doing a couture collection and I thought I'd do one instead of buying an apartment. But after that first experience I found that I enjoyed doing it so much, even if it was stressful, and done without all the money that we needed. It was very positive. Also, customers started to come, and we got some orders, so I said, "Have we enough money to make another one?" and we continued.

IS: There's something that you do with the French tradition--you kind of twist it, out of love.

JPG: I do love it. To be honest, I love all the cliches about Paris and French things. I was born into it. It's because I appreciate so much about what's happening in the other countries, in Japan, in America, in Africa, in Morocco, in Spain, in Italy also, that I also appreciate very French things. It would be a nightmare for me if everything became international. Everybody can be, has to be, different; and we can love each other, being all different. It's our differences that make us strong, and make us interesting for the other.

IS: Do you think this is a moment when it feels as though Paris is incredibly alive again?

JPG: Yes, truly. Maybe because there are a lot of different talents expressing themselves in a lot of different fields. We even have some techno now that can be exported.

IS: And you have Loft Story.

JPG: You know that?

IS: Sure. Jean Paul, I'm sure you and I could go and get an incredible hamburger in Paris. But--

JPG: [laughs] No, no. I don't want to even try.

IS: That's what I'm getting at. Part of the romance, the experiences that we come to Paris for are those things that are particularly Parisian, which is why it would be weird if they started to show couture in New York, say.

JPG: It's nice to follow those kinds of tradition. I must say that I love, I know this is stupid, but in America, when you go to the, comment dit-on ca? You know when you are with your car and you look at a movie?

IS: [after puzzled pause]... Oh! The drive-in.

JPG: Yeah! For me, it's truly exotic and beautiful. When I come to the States, we will try to manage some drive-ins!

IS: You're on.

Jean Paul Gaultier is the Designer of Jean Paul Gaultier couture and women's and men's ready-to-wear.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group