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Jean Paul Gaultier Haute Couture: designer Glenn Martens unveils a sensual and maximalist collection
Invited by Jean Paul Gaultier to create a couture collection, Glenn Martens, Belgian designer, and artistic director of Y/Project, unveils 36 pieces that skillfully evoke the designer’s heritage.
Since his final spectacular show in January 2020, Jean Paul Gaultier has been showcasing his rich heritage through the vision of guest designers. For the fall-winter 2021 haute couture collection, the Japanese designer Chitose Abe applied her hybridization and experimental approach to the designer’s archives, while last May five young designers, including Nix Lecourt Mansion, Alan Crocetti, Palomo Spain, Marvin M’Toumo and Ottolinger produced a collection of genderless and inclusive pieces based on one of Jean Paul Gaultier’s favourite themes, the myth of the sailor.
For the beginning of 2022, it is up to Glenn Martens, artistic director of the Y/Project brand, winner of the Andam prize in 2017 and artistic director of Diesel since 2020, to revive Jean Paul Gaultier’s fashion. This is a significant invitation for the Belgian, whose career began in 2008 in his rue Saint-Martin studio. On Wednesday 26th January, 2022, he presented in this industrial-style building an haute couture collection that is as sensual as it is maximalist, composed of deconstructed, oversized and quirky looks that brilliantly blend both their worlds. “We seldom get the chance to put together such elaborate silhouettes. For me, couture means pure beauty and elegance. Looks that have no business being on the street”, Glenn Martens explains.
