Jean Paul Gaultier: Catwalk
There is no question that without Jean Paul Gaultier contemporary fashion would not be the same. A pivotal figure, he was a bridge between French classism and its very subversion. Gaultier had great respect for French fashion’s history and craft, while sending up its bourgeois pretensions by reveling in pop culture. He showed fashion that, in Susan Sontag’s words, one can be serious about the frivolous, and frivolous about the serious. His fashion origins were in punk (he saw the Sex Pistols perform one of their two concerts in Paris a month before he showed his first punk-inspired collection), his body of work was in camp, and he finished as the great Parisian couturier.