The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier – Barbican, London

There is no denying that the exhibition design is wonderful, and creates an immersive world, particularly through the use of mannequins with faces projected onto them who speak, sing and ‘interact’ with each other.  The clothing itself is divided into common themes in Gaultier’s work, and I found that placing the Breton stripe and then the mermaid/virgin motifs at the beginning of the exhibition had the effect of making it at once familiar to the visitor who has likely seen Gaultier’s striped shirts before, but at the same time removing the visitor slightly from reality, and preparing them for what is still to come.  My favourite little section of the exhibition came a bit later on with one mannequin upstairs who interacted with its ‘reflection’, discussing why men’s fashion had become so limited over time, while also playfully touching on image and reality and the reflection as a facsimile of the original or something else in its own right.

The clothing itself was also by turns interesting, technically impressive and beautiful.  The different themes worked well as a whole, and as I went through the exhibition I did begin to build up a picture of Gaultier’s personality, unfamiliar as I previously had been with his 1990’s appearances on UK television in live and puppet forms.  I liked the touches such as the inclusion on some labels of the number of hours needed to create a particular garment, as well as the large variety of quotes from people from the fashion and pop culture worlds.  I even liked the personals stories from Gaultier’s childhood, although I did feel they contributed to the perhaps overly positive message of Gaultier’s virtues of inclusiveness and tolerance and breaking down of barriers of gender and race.  I started to think it had gone too far about the time that I read that “[s]ocieties and invidivuals separated by language! custom and geography merge into a world where passports proclaim “Planet Gaultier”.”  I don’t dispute the sentiment, just the uncritical acceptance of it throughout the exhibition, particularly when the diversity is sometimes more talked about than shown.

The other element I found to be uncritical in the exhibition was the section on clothing inspired by world cultures.  There is a free app with the exhibition which is packed full of additional content in the form of images, further texts, videos and audio clips, but I would have liked to see more for example in the section on the controversial ‘Rabbi Chic’ collection, given that the exhibition label refers the viewer here for more information.  I think that an opportunity was given here to provide more variety of viewpoints for those interested in delving deeper into particular topics.

Overall, however, I came out of the exhibition with a much better understanding of Gaultier’s designs, the man himself, and how he has fit into the world of pop culture over the past few decades, and this is what the exhibition set out to do.  If I thought it could have done more, this was perhaps just me imposing my own expectations onto it like face onto a mannequin.