view slideshow » .

Jean Paul Gaultier: The Dark Side of Downton Abbey

In the end, it was indeed well worth the wait even if several score of the audience walked out of the latest Jean Paul Gaultier haute couture show one hour after the due starting time, when the producer announced on the loudspeakers that it would still be a further 20 minutes before the event began.

Thus, empty seats were sprinkled throughout the audience for this fall 2012 collection, and well should the absent regret their impatience for this was a lovingly bravura display of couture, French chic at its most impertinently perverse.

Staged the couturier’s Paris headquarters on Wednesday, July 4, the last day of shows in the couture season, the collection felt like the artists staff had taken over a great chateau after the owners had gone aboard.
Most of the casting – both men and women – wore tails, or versions thereof. Gaultier entitles every look in his shows, and the opening outfit, named “Dandy Precocious,” was actually model Erin O’Connor in masculine tails with top hat and trousers buttoned at the ankle.

The runway photographers – hyped up by the extended delay - whopped and yelled the cast down the catwalk; cheering as supe Karlie Kloss emoted suggestively at the head of the runway in her micro hacking jacket, worn over a see-through, tinted gold tulle body stocking.

The couturier riffed a little too frequently on his classics. But they all sizzled, from a calico trench coat with a cavalier’s cape or mini fracks in crocodile over naughty girl mousseline blouses.

Plus his menswear was all highly risqué – Heathcliff tough guys in top hats, mega tight tails and corsets. Talk about rascal chic.

For evening, downtown flappers took over the party with velvet dresses, finished with Art Deco beaded, topped by turquoise fox boleros. True attention seeking style.

“It’s the dark side of Downton Abbey,” quipped Shala Monroque, the It Gal and creative director of acclaimed Russian art and fashion magazine Garage who sat front row, referring to the cult U.K. country house TV melodrama. Could not have put it better ourselves.

In a sense, this was a classical exposition of the Gaultier oeuvre – all very brilliant, and technically accomplished, right to the boxer meets Imperial emperor dressing gowns with the legend Gaultier Paris skillfully cut into devore velvet. Maybe too classical; for though highly memorable it all felt a tiny bit too sealed in aspic, and just not that terribly modern.

* Jean Paul Gaultier: Ava Gardner Avatar		* Thom Browne Spring 2014 * Delpozo Spring 2014