Tatler UK - 08.2019

Tatler August 2019 tatler.com

Sketches for

Madonna’s

Blond

Ambition

tour, 1990

Jean Paul

Gaultier with

Madonna

in 1995

David

Beckham in

the infamous

sarong, 1998

S/S 78

A/W 08

Gaultier filming

Eurotrash, 1993

A/W 91

A/W Couture 97

S/S Couture 97

J

ean Paul Gaultier has long had a

love affair with Britain, though

you’d struggle to call it a cuddle-

some romance. The French fashion

designer’s vision of Blighty is less

scones and tea with the Queen, more

skinheads, punks and sex clubs. He still fondly

recalls going to see The Rocky Horror Show on the

louche King’s Road of the Seventies.

‘I went into zee theatre,’ recalls Gaultier, who

at 67 is exactly as you’d expect, especially if you

spent the Nineties enjoying his stint presenting

Channel 4’s Eurotrash. The same sparkly eyes,

the naughty grin, the borderline Prince Charles

ears and the almost parodically Franglais accent,

full of ‘zees’ and ‘zeres’. ‘And there was a little

old lady with her lamp putting us into our

seats. She was little, old, fragile... And when we

sat, she put her lamp down and did a monster

face: “Wwaoooooo,”’ he says, doing a brilliant

imitation of a demented old usherette. ‘A freak

thing! I find that fabulous,’ he sighs ecstatically.

‘Only in England.’

Freak things are very much Gaultier’s bag,

as his latest project, soon to be seen at the

Queen Elizabeth Hall, attests. In some ways, it

feels like the perfect summary of his nearly 50

years in the fashion game. After the ready-to-

wear line and the haute couture, the gazillion-

selling perfumes in those signature silhouette

bottles, the 1989 electro-pop single, Eurotrash,

the documentaries and the globally touring

exhibition, he’s now giving us a stage extravaganza

• and its name is Fashion Freak Show. An all-
  singing, all-dancing revue based on his life
  story, it serves up a strong mélange of rumpy-
  pumpy, gender-bending and warbled chanson,
  complete with dancing teddy bears and moving
  homages to Gaultier’s late boyfriend and
  grandmother. There’s also – lucky us – a nod
  to his saucy London phase.
  ‘What story to write?’ he remembers think-
  ing, as he reflects on the show’s inspiration.
  The answer was simple: ‘Mine. And fashion is
  what I know the most, after all. It’s via fashion
  that I have expressed myself.’ Which is why it’s
  awash with nods to his famous creations and
  collaborations with the likes of Kylie Minogue,
  Pedro Almódovar and, of course, Madonna. It
  was he who gave her Madgesty that notorious
  conical bra, just as he gave David Beckham his
  memorable sarong. And Gaultier and Madonna
  are still going strong – you must have noticed
  the Game of Thrones-goes-intergalactic costumes
  he created for the material girl’s Eurovision
  performance in May.
  ‘She is somebody exceptional,’ he says, over
  breakfast at a London hotel, switching as ever
  between French and English as he rattles along:
  ‘Ouf! Wow! Respect total!’ Madonna, he says,
  ‘is like a monstre of work. And she is still fighting.

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