FASHION Magazine

By Zoe Whittall

In the early ’90s, I would take an hour-long bus trip from the suburbs of Montreal to hang out with friends in the city’s downtown core. I remember seeing billboards featuring lithe girls (who mainly looked like boys) posing in black and white alongside Highway 20, selling the apotheosis of gender erasure via CK One fragrance ads. It was a time when Quebec-born supermodel Ève Salvail was the biggest question mark on the scene. She sent shockwaves through the industry when she first walked down Jean Paul Gaultier’s runway with a shaved and tattooed head. She represented an overtly androgynous presence in the fashion industry and seemed, to me, as rare and queer as a glitter-encrusted rainbow unicorn.

But I’ll say it straight: Lesbians are rarely part of the fashion party. The Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and its museum’s latest exhibit,  A Queer History of Fashion—which opens Sept. 13—touches on the subject.

“So pleased.” That was how Jean Paul Gaultier summed up his feelings about his retrospective Monday night at the VIP party held at Montreal’s Musée des Beaux-Arts. “The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk” opened Monday night with an intimate gathering that mixed Gaultier’s inner circle with Quebec designers and celebs. Male muse Tanel Bedrossiantz in skirt and mohawk, bald and tattooed Ève Salvail, Francisco Randez, star of Gaultier Le Male fragrance ads and doll-like French singer Arielle, in body-hugging tulle, joined musician Melissa Auf der Maur, International Herald Tribune critic Suzy Menkes, Newsweek’s Robin Givhan, and hairstylist Odile Gilbert in touring the show. An ebullient Gaultier, who initially had not been keen on the notion of a retrospective—“it can be like a funeral,” he told me back in January—was clearly enjoying himself, wandering the rooms and amiably chatting and posing for photos.

Photography by Peter Stigter

“I always think of Gaultier in terms of the colours he used early on, relishing his lurid shades of green, yellow and brown. I’ve enjoyed his references to French culture—pulpy policiers or Yvette Horner, the accordéoniste–and always thought of his palette as a tribute to the tobacco-stained walls of Paris dives.” ­—David Livingstone, Writer