JEAN PAUL GAULTIER IS ARGUABLY SUPREME’S EDGIEST COLLABORATOR YET
Supreme has revealed its latest high-fashion collaboration, this time with famed Parisian designer Jean Paul Gaultier. Gaultier is best known for his ready-to-wear label and couture collections of the ’80s, ’90s, and mid-’00s, as well as his seven-year tenure as creative director of Hermès.
The new Supreme drop is, according to a quick survey of the Highsnobiety office, “strong,” one that has translated elements of Gaultier’s legendary design philosophy into a palatable range of core streetwear and a bogo-fied edition of his iconic Le Male fragrance.
After learning his trade under the tutelage of Pierre Cardin, Gaultier showed his first collection in 1976. A young Martin Margiela was watching and later gushed to Vogue, “I was seized by an excitement I had never felt before.” Nine years later, Gaultier hired Margiela as an assistant. The Belgian designer would eventually make fashion history of his own, and two years under Gaultier helped to foster that.
Gaultier earned his moniker as fashion’s enfant terrible with a procession of irreverent collections, often reacting to the world around him with devious alacrity. For Spring 2005, against the backdrop of France’s national debate on gay marriage, editors were invited not to a fashion show but to a “wedding,” with same-sex models walking down the “aisle” in a collection of kilts, loose satin tailoring, neon sportswear, and rusty orange denim.
