Paris Fashion Week fall 2013: Jean Paul Gaultier review
PARIS -- With a new show venue (a theater instead of his headquarters) and a new investor (Puig), French fashion’s 60-year-old enfant terrible Jean Paul Gaultier was hoping for a reboot when he showed his fall 2013 collection Saturday night at Paris Fashion Week.
The scene: Dispensing with the campy themes we’ve come to expect from his recent runway extravaganzas (last season’s ode to 1980s pop stars, for example), Gaultier seemed to be trying to put the focus back on the clothes. Of course, that didn’t prevent him from using goofy, mullet-style wigs.
The look: Riffs on his own classics, starting with a pair of studded leather cone-bra shirts and carrying through to trench coats, patchwork furs and sharp-shouldered jackets worn with leggings. New propositions included maxi skirts and sack dresses in an alphabet logo print spelling out “Jean Paul Gaultier” or a print of models in silhouette.
The verdict: While Gaultier succeeded in updating several of his signatures from the 1980s and ‘90s and making them more palatable for today, he didn’t register any connection to the grittiness of the street, which is what earned him the “enfant terrible” moniker in the first place.
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