When Jean-Paul Gaultier was creative director of Hermès

The year 2003 is when the enfant terrible of fashion Jean-Paul Gaultier arrives at the creative direction of Hermès. During that historical period, designers like Tom Ford, John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, and Marc Jacobs were carrying out a cultural design in response to the minimalism of the '90s - the disruptive elements of Y2K were just a part of the process of dismantling those aesthetic codes hidden behind the cleanliness of pinstripes or deconstructed office uniforms. Jean-Paul Gaultier, for his part, had already initiated a profound transformation of the fashion industry by building a type of language made up of corsets, ethnic prints, sexy sailors, and collaborations with culturally relevant artists on the international pop scene.

His appointment as creative director of the French maison fits into the years of acquisitions and structuring of large luxury groups: Gucci Group NV acquires Saint Laurent competing against LVMH, the Prada group is ready to incorporate Helmut Lang, while Hermès makes commercial agreements with Jean-Paul Gaultier obtaining a 35% share of his brand. «The agreement between Hermès and Gaultier, the eternal enfant terrible of French fashion, represents a personal rite of passage that could transform his brand from cult to significant brand. The step also demonstrates that independent designers need a powerful partner to survive in a world increasingly dominated by luxury conglomerates» wrote Suzy Menkes in the New York Times in 1999. The partnership, needless to say, already had sartorial precedents: Jean-Louis Dumas, then president of Hermès, wore Gaultier's marinière striped sweaters tying them around his suits, just as the designer celebrated the maison's ties by making a knot at camp height. «I believe that Gaultier has the ability to be what Hermès has become» reads the New York Times - a love affair more than a commercial agreement that would lead the designer to the creative direction of Hermès right after the period of Martin Margiela.

Jean-Paul Gaultier's collections for Hermès

Lou Doillon with a leather jacket, equestrian attire surrounded by voluminous natural hair and a whip in hand: Hermès FW04 captured the chaotic and undisciplined nature of a creative widely acclaimed by critics grappling with the granite dimension of Hermès luxury. On bales of hay arranged along the training field of the École Militaire, the audience interacted with top hats, whips, equestrian outfits, suede knee-length skirts, cardigans with removable fur collars, and scarves with fringes so long they became luxurious coats. The orange, the brand's distinctive color, was desacralized on sports jackets or more casual outerwear. The Gaultier-Hermès match plays on a precarious balance between opposites seeking an area of convergence between the warm and maximalist verve of the former and the neutral palette of the latter. An intersection that, with the FW07 collection, reaches full maturity in the form of bomber jackets and black crocodile leather jackets, pencil skirts with ruffles, biker caps, brown tweed suits, knit dresses in autumn tones, and even men's tuxedos borrowed for a feminine dandy - Gaultier's more theatrical and dramatic tone coexists with the meticulousness required in crafting a luxury product. The Hermès imagery, already previously marked by Martin Margiela's vision and logo-free layering, is infused with a sensuality and a subtle dose of irony foreign to the brand's narrative that Gaultier would bring to the runway until his last collection for Hermès, the SS11. «Gaultier bids farewell to Hermès with the Andalusian horsewoman» headlines one of the articles the web returns when searching for testimonies about the designer's work in the territory of the quintessential luxury maison. Black leather suits, tight and fitted pants, a parade of butter-colored riding boots, and knit dresses tightened by varnished lizard corsets brought into a real riding arena: with real horses and riders in the background, the show grandly closed the Gaultier saga at Hermès.

Jean-Paul Gaultier's bags and accessories for Hermès

If for the prêt-à-porter collections Gaultier channeled his creative flair into a theatricality that always remained respectful of Hermès' DNA, it is in the accessories that his hyper-narrative coding found receptors predisposed to experimentation. Already during his first shows, the enfant terrible of fashion had proposed a version of the 25 cm Birkin dethroning the more popular 35 cm model. On TikTok, an interactive archive reference for any fashion enthusiast, his bags have found a new spotlight today: first the JPG Shoulder Birkin, then the Kelly Pochette, the Medor clutch and Lindy and even the Kelly Cut, Danse or Picnic have become the fetish of creators, resellers, and aspiring fashion divulgators. Gaultier compressed and elongated the Birkin into a Y2K bag, made an illusionist version in 2009 (the Shadow Birkin) and, before we even talked about tenniscore, had paraded a variant in cream lizard with a coordinated tennis ball. Details of the bags, like the brass closure, were proposed in clothing adaptations positioned on camel-colored coats, gloves, boots, and even corsets resembling a saddle - the bags as elements to embed in Hermès' wardrobe. The Kelly, made of wicker and leather or transformed into an ultra-soft pouch to wear at the waist or even as a bra, took on the characteristics of a Teddy bag in 2005. As if to underline the idea that fashion, in that precise historical phase, enjoyed a luxury that we might have forgotten: the proverbial and carefree irony of those who did not have to liberate anyone from anything. Of those who could even have fun with clothes.