Jean Paul Gaultier Fall/Winter 2024 Haute Couture Embraces Dark, Sensual Minimalism

For the third day of Couture Week in Paris, the Jean Paul Gaultier fashion show was certainly the most anticipated event—and guests had to wait all day to witness it in the evening. After the designer's retirement in 2020, the label's couture collections have been reimagined each season through the eyes of a different designer. Simone Rocha, for example, infused it with a coquette-core soul, while Glenn Martens imagined a more experimental look to reinvent the Gaultier DNA under his singular vision. For Fall/Winter 2024, the chosen designer was Nicolas Di Felice, the artistic director of Courrèges, who is adored as a modern master of seductive minimalism.

The show was held at Jean Paul Gaultier’s headquarters on Rue Saint-Martin, where the models strode down immaculate white color floors with an incredibly narrow catwalk and five rows of crowded seats. People in the tightly packed crowd fanned themselves with show notes, trying to counteract the heat coming from a broken A/C system and countless skylights. What followed definitely didn’t cool any audience members down. Suddenly, the first silhouettes were revealed: an all-black draped trench dress with a wide collar and a veil that covered the model from the eyes to the toes; a shorter leather version of the first look with a similar veil to maintain balance; a flowing black column dress with a long train and a neckline that stopped just before the model's eye line. Many looks also revolved around the corset and incorporated elements of lingerie and transparent materials. 

The collection traversed a spectrum from dark to light and modest to revealing, with early looks composed of high, dark necklines fixed to corsets that evoked imagery of peering over a dressing screen–seductive and beautiful in its own way, but not as bold as later looks where models had on dresses that peeled at the hips and transparent, plastic tube dresses. Audience members also quickly recognized the references and archives in which Nicolas Di Felice immersed himself for this Couture collection: Les Touristes Japoneses au Louvre from the spring of 1999, Constructivism from the fall of 1986, and Women Among Women from the fall of 1989. Felice has certainly put forth one of the boldest guest designer collections so far, telling a story uniquely his own, enabled by Gaultier’s renowned legacy and manufacturing capabilities.