Jean Paul Gaultier Couture: Dandies, Decadence, and George Sand.

This review may be a little on the dodgy side because I wrote it through a veil of tears while pouring chocolate truffles and absinthe directly into my mouth and smoking a cheroot in a ten-inch-long holder. GUYS, I JUST LOVE THIS COLLECTION A LOT, OK. Gaultier's a triple-threat expert in the field of awesome yet faintly ridiculous haute couture, his main failing being the restrictive nature of his influences. This season, as with so many of his previous collections, Gaultier was inspired by Victorian dandies, vintage corsetry, tuxedoes, and classic Indian fashions, but even after thirty years in the public eye he still seems to be able to turn out new ideas for stunning couture.

photos from Style.com

The show opened with Erin O'Connor in a top hat and tails, dressed in an homage to George Sand. Gaultier has long enjoyed playing with gender-roles in his shows and even though his new Menswear collection was revealed only last week, this Couture show included new "menswear couture" items as well as several womenswear outfits worn by male models.

Tanel Bedrossiantz has modeled in over eighty of Gaultier's shows now, and as he ages he seems to grow more and more vampiric in appearance. Tanel commands a certain fearsomeness that can't quite be managed by the younger, prettier male models, which is exactly what Gaultier's shows need -- something to leven the slightly cheesy Moulin Rouge air for which he is so well-known.

It's unclear whether Andrej Pejic's first outfit was from the menswear or womenswear department -- perhaps intentionally so. On one side it was a relatively average dinner-suit, but the other side was completely sheer with an elbow-length leather glove. Even the shape holds no clues, because this season Gaultier almost entirely abandoned his love of corsetry in favour of a looser, more masculine silhouette for the womenswear. Corsets, in fact, were only seen on the men, with slight hourglass silhouettes being added to the suit-jackets through rigid structure-work and clever tailoring.

This collection wasn't so much a celebration of fresh creativity as it was about quality. While dandies and 19th-century decadence are by no means a new topic in the world of high-end fashion, a show like this proves that Gaultier can provide consistent excellence without resorting to gimmickry.

 Current mood: desperate to wear these iridescent grey velvet trousers and green shoes:

This is the kind of textured, luxurious couture work that makes me miss Christian Lacroix.

The one low point of the show was, for me, this purple tailcoat modeled by Erin O'Connor. It's a little too 1970s Vegas magician compared to the 19th-century sumptuousness of the rest of the collection.

The eveningwear ran from late nineteenth to early 20th century, with some outfits almost reaching flapper proportions. Fortunately the styling was such that most of the gowns didnt fall into the period-movie costume trap, although the colour scheme did remain securely in vintage tones of red, gold, and pale blue-green.

In among the out-and-out period pieces were some outfits that were harder to define, but no less beautiful for it. One of the things this season really made me appreciate was Gaultier's ability to balance a show: not too many costumey pieces, but enough that the collection seemed to vary widely from beginning to end. While the tuxedo-inspired suits (for both men and women) were relatively recogniseable as dandy-wear, some of the gowns seem to go straight for the faux-medieval trends of the early 20th-century aristocracy, and others had hints of angular Art Deco imagery:

Sidenote: My new hobby is printing off 1000 copies of this photo of the best spats of all time, folding the photos into a giant origami bed, and then rolling around on the bed until I die.

Tanel Bedrossiantz is Dracula.

While I usually dislike strapless body-suits, this gold outfit modelled by Karlie Kloss was so stunning I had to include it. The cape photographs so beautifully while in motion that it makes me sad this piece is almost certainly one of the ones that'll be bought up by a collector, never to be worn again by anything other than a mannequin.

These exterior-framework outfits were reminiscent of early Thierry Mugler or Gaultier's own designs from the '80s and '90s -- stripped-down corsetry and crinoline hooping, with a fetish edge. The gold bustier dress even seems to include some kind of chastity belt, and looks terrifyingly inflexible.

As is traditional, the show closed with a bridal gown, this one worn with a deconstructed top hat and made entirely from solid white fabric. Even this was dandy-influenced, with tuxedo lapels swooping down the model's back to join the floor-length skirts.

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Ozwald Boateng: A Man's Story

For the past twelve years, documentary filmmaker Varon Bonicos has been following Ozwald Boateng's journey to becoming one of the most successful tailors and menswear designers in the world. A Man's Story may not be one of the most investigative of documentaries, but from the perspective of someone who gets the same pleasure and intellectual stimulation from high-end fashion that other people might get from going to an art gallery, this film is a godsend.

source

A Man's Story is a delight to watch for the same reasons that people gravitate towards world-class athletes and musical prodigies. It's immediately apparent that Boateng was made to do what he does. When we first see him with his parents it's a shock because they are so normal-looking. Ozwald, on the other hand, towers over everyone, has perfect posture, and is one of the most attractive people I have ever seen. His mere presence is an advertisement for the clothes he wears and creates. In motion, he's as smooth and exacting as one of his suits. And when he's working on those suits, it's with a silent, intuitive speed that belies the 10,000 hours of practise Malcolm Gladwell says one needs before one can be a master of any skill.

Ozwald Boateng in Tom Stoddart's Walk With Giants photoshoot.

In order to understand Boateng both as a creative person and as a powerhouse of the menswear industry one must first understand that he's not a "fashion designer", he's a tailor. He's the youngest person -- and the only black man to date -- to open a shop in the prestigous Savile Row, and even once he reaches the level of Creative Director of Menswear at Givenchy and is dressing A-list celebrities, he makes no bones of the fact that his aims are that of a tailor, not a typical fashion designer. Also, he's not terribly good at the sort of art-school jargon that most high-end designers tend to churn out when explaining their work. Boateng is the director of a few of the sort of short fashion films in which people spout cryptic phrases at each other while doing things like pouring sand into boxes and gazing thoughtfully at at the landscape, and having watched a couple of them I think it's safe to say that while his aesthetic instincts are second to none, he's no concept artist.

The 100 models of Ozwald Boateng's A Man's Story collection in 2010.

I think it's rather telling that even after twelve years of filming and four hundred hours of footage shot, both the documentary itself and its portrait of Boateng are still more style than substance. The tagline is "The Coolest Man On Earth", which couldn't be more accurate considering his effortless good taste and the endless well of confidence that allows him to rub elbows with the rich and famous and maintain a ruthless "You have no option other than to impress me," business attitude. There are a lot of talking-head interviews with celebrities saying how witty and fascinating he is, but no real evidence of that onscreen. At no point does he successfully articulate the thought processes behind his creative drive, and the film doesn't make much of an attempt to delve into the technicalities of tailoring or the menswear design industry.

from Ozwald Boateng's Spring/Summer 2012 collection.

This is a man with only two aspects to his life: his career and his family, and over the course of the film he torpedoes the latter in favour of the former. In the footage from the mid-2000s it's clear that Boateng is an incredibly uxorious man, but even while you're watching him speak of the deep love he has for his wife, you get the feeling that the marriage is unlikely to last. Never mind the more prosaic concerns that they're a pair of rich, extremely good-looking creative people who spend a lot of time on opposite sides of the globe; he's just too single-minded. Like many geniuses, his focus is so concentrated on his work that everything else is a secondary concern. One of the truest moments in the film is an interview with his ex-wife, in which she says with a sort of weary affection that Boateng still doesn't really seem to understand what went wrong in their marriage.

Boateng in 1994. I'm 90% sure he doesn't actually age.

As a triumph-over-adversity story this film is emotionally engaging but far from groundbreaking. However, it's still impressive to watch Boateng steamroller through the various obstacles life throws at him and proceed to become a world-famous designer and businessman. In the aftermath of his first divorce, his first major show after moving to Savile Row is beset with disaster, and then the entire collection is promptly stolen from the premises. And yet a few years later, through a combination of talent and unrelenting ambition, he's been awarded an OBE and is sought-after for red carpet fittings by A-list actors. Both as a behind-the-scenes film about the fashion world and as a biopic I think A Man's Story could have gone into more depth and detail, but if you enjoy menswear as much as I do then that may not matter all that much.

Ozwald Boateng in Tom Stoddart's Walk With Giants photoshoot

A Man's Story goes on general release in the UK on March 9, 2012.

Links
Trailer/preview clip for A Man's Story.
Ozwald Boateng homepage.
Footage of Boateng's 100-model-strong A Man's Life show in 2010.

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