EXCLUSIVE: Julien Dossena Is Embracing ‘Freedom’ at Jean Paul Gaultier

“A succession of wows, fixed astonishment” is how Julien Dossena described the hours spent trawling by way of the Jean Paul Gaultier archive in preparation for his position as visitor couturier on the home subsequent July.

“It introduced again reminiscences, it introduced again sensations,” stated the designer, who first discovered in regards to the “enfant horrible” of Paris style as a toddler rising up in Brittany, having stumbled throughout a tv program about Gauliter.

“If you find yourself touching all these items, you may attempt to perceive the pondering that allowed him to reach at that actual reference, blended with one other reference that makes it distinctive and on the similar time tremendous French, blended with that cool, Nineteen Nineties grunge feeling — but realized with essentially the most beautiful methods and embroideries,” he marveled. “You understand that’s what makes him one of many best couturiers and designers of his time.”

Suffice it to say that Dossena is approaching this extracurricular undertaking with gusto, reverence — and the identical meticulous method he has plied at Paco Rabanne, the place he has been artistic director since 2013.

In an unique interview on the Jean Paul Gaultier couture salon final week, Dossena stated he plans to absorb a broad sweep of the designer’s lengthy style profession, striving to make his one-off couture assortment for fall 2023 as wealthy and “beneficiant” as Gaultier’s legacy.

He cited a specific fascination with the ’90s, a fecund decade for indie style designers in Paris, and affection for Gaultier’s controversial “Stylish Rabbis” assortment exalting the great thing about Orthodox Jewish attire, and his “Russian Constructivist” effort for fall 1986.

“He labored on so many issues that I really feel linked to, so I actually needed to undergo an enhancing course of in my mind,” he stated. “However I additionally needed to embrace that free approach of working that he has.”

The designer stated his different problem could be to embrace the precision and occasional flamboyance of couture methods with out “dropping the cool of it — the easiness and effortlessness that I believe is basically evocative of Gaultier’s work.”

He hinted that his runway present throughout Paris Couture Week, which runs from July 3 to six, would approximate the intimacy of Gaultier’s earliest reveals within the Galerie Vivienne, when the garments practically brushed the knees of the spectators lining that slender lined buying passage.

Dossena famous that Gaultier has figured prominently all through his style profession, with that preliminary discovery of the designer on tv opening his eyes to the potential for such a job, and an outlet for his sketching proclivities.

He grew to become a fan as a high-school pupil into trance music, monitoring down a pair of uncooked denim Gaultier denims and a mesh shirt in a “tribal” print for clubbing.

As soon as he grew to become a style pupil at La Cambre in Brussels, Dossena religiously tracked Gaultier’s newest collections on Fashion.com. “He grew to become a determine I used to be all the time due to his curiosity and analysis,” stated Dossena, wearing a black T-shirt and unfastened trousers.

His first design job out of faculty, from 2008 to 2012, was within the Balenciaga studio in Paris, the place he labored intently with its then-creative director Nicolas Ghesquière, himself an alum of Jean Paul Gaultier.

Dossena stated he detected in Ghesquière an identical zeal for newness by way of a “fixed exploration” of what’s attainable in style.

“Let’s say the highest quality for a designer is to all the time put your self in peril for the sake of curiosity and pleasure,” he stated, lauding the liberty, selection and sense of playfulness inherent in Gaultier’s finest work.

“Gaultier has a very robust type — you may inform immediately when it’s a Gaultier,” he enthused. “And on the similar time, there’s that unending analysis and curiosity on completely different themes or methods — it could possibly be historic or tremendous fashionable and technological; it could possibly be pop or noble with a tremendous minimize.”

Consequently, Dossena stated he was “genuinely excited” when he was invited to develop into the fifth visitor couturier at Jean Paul Gaultier, following Haider Ackermann, Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing, Glenn Martens of Y/Mission and Diesel, and Chitose Abe of Sacai. “After all, I’m taking it actually significantly as a result of I really like his work and his character a lot.”

Following his retirement from the runway in 2020, Gaultier got here up with the concept of the couture home inviting completely different designers to interpret his huge and eclectic oeuvre, achieved over a profession spanning 50 years. It’s rapidly develop into a spotlight of couture week — and fueled curiosity in Gaultier’s contributions to the style and popular culture.

WWD broke the information on March 2 that Gaultier’s subsequent invitee was being recruited from throughout the Puig style household: Each Paco Rabanne and Jean Paul Gaultier are owned by the Spanish style and perfume group.

“Julien has a specific sense of reinterpretation, and I’m curious to see how he’ll play with my codes,” Gaultier informed WWD. “Paco Rabanne’s heritage is extraordinarily wealthy, and Julien is aware of make this energy resonate in his collections.”

Dossena remains to be within the early levels of realizing the Jean Paul Gaultier couture assortment, and targeted largely on growing materials, launching embroideries and testing some preliminary form concepts.

However he was already marveling on the capabilities of the couture atelier “with superb arms and a crew that may go actually far in explorations of what’s attainable. It’s such as you’re driving a Rolls-Royce,” he stated.

Requested if he would possibly embrace some designs for males, as earlier visitor couturiers have, Dossena famous that he seemingly would as Gaultier “mainly invented that gender-fluid factor that we’re speaking about, with out even theorizing it. For him, it was a playfulness and freedom of expression he needed to precise genuinely.

“In his casting, in his groups, he was all the time giving individuals an opportunity to precise their uniqueness — and people questions are actually on the core of our reflection proper now in style,” he added.

He marveled that Gaultier didn’t deal with his couture creations as valuable objects, typically recycling couture attire into completely different designs — so a robe would possibly develop into a costume, and later a skirt and a bra.

“In a brilliant good approach, I used to be shocked and amazed that nothing was sacred. A chunk could possibly be reworked and reworked and repurposed differently simply because he needed to replace it or enhance it,” he stated. “I actually wish to discover that stability, that rigidity between that preciousness and that beautiful consideration you could put right into a couture garment, and on the similar time to suggest one thing that feels now.”