Jean Paul Gaultier returns with ready-to-wear collections and guest designers

New collection features designer’s signature sailor style

The house of Jean Paul Gaultier has released a new ready-to-wear collection dedicated to the fashion designer’s love of mariner stripes and style (Nicolas Coulomb)

The house of Jean Paul Gaultier is making a comeback with ready-to-wear clothing and guest designers, set to reveal different couture collaborations every season.

The first collection is dedicated to the designer’s beloved mariner style, and is set to debut on Friday on the brand’s new online store and Ssense.com, as part of its digital-first strategy.

Gaultier, infamous as the fashion world’s enfant terrible, said goodbye to the runway in January 2020, when he held his last couture show in Pairs before retiring.

But the new strategy for the fashion house will bring back ready-to-wear collections to “celebrate Gaultier, its values, its archives and its history”, said general manager Antoine Gagey.

Gaultier himself is not in charge of designing the house’s clothes but he is contracted as an ambassador and is involved in choosing the guest designers.

In an interview with Women's Wear Daily, Gagey talks about the brand’s new guest designer business model, which first began in March 2020 with a one-off couture collection created by Sacai’s Chitose Abe following Jean Paul Gaultier’s retirement.

The couture collection was meant to be showcase in July 2020, but has been postponed twice due to the coronavirus pandemic. It is now scheduled to go ahead during Paris Couture Week, from 5 to 8 July.

The house of Jean Paul Gaultier has released a new ready-to-wear collection, in collaboration with five designers (Nicolas Coulomb)

The house’s ready-to-wear collections will not follow the current seasonal calendar, Gagey revealed, and will instead adopt a “freewheeling approach” and could see the brand dropping six to 10 collections a year.

These collections will vary in size and scale and will make use of archival styles, vintage or upcycled pieces. They will be designed by invited creatives as well as the in-house design team.

The latest sailor collection includes a silhouette or accessory from each of the five invited designers, Ottolinger, Palomo Spain, Nicola Lecourt Mansion, Alan Crocetti and Marvin M’Toumo.

The house of Jean Paul Gaultier has released a new ready-to-wear collection, in collaboration with five designers (Nicolas Coulomb)

Gagey told the magazine that the sailor theme was inspired by the 1982 erotic arthouse film Querelle by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, based on French author Jean Genet’s 1947 novel, Querelle of Brest.

Of Gaultier’s involvement in the new strategy, Gagey said: “He’s still working with us on different aspects of the brand, but he didn’t want to play that role of designing the collection anymore.

“He’s still helping us, giving us some direction.”