“This is a match made in heaven,” said Rick Owens, who came to see how Ludovic de Saint Sernin would interpret the haute couture legacy of Jean Paul Gaultier. With the inimitable Michèle Lamy and Tyrone Dylan by his side, Owens said this was his first time attending one of the maison’s guest designer shows, and that both JPG and LdSS “always reach the same kind of sensuality.” What kind of sensuality would that be? Referring specifically to de Saint Sernin he replied, “sensual but sophisticated, slutty but classy.”
In the dimmed show space within the Gaultier HQ, where we initially waited and waited like in the olden days of Gaultier, de Saint Sernin delivered on all of this and more as the eighth—and youngest—designer invited into the ateliers for a single season. He dove straight in, starting with a theme, “Le Naufrage,” which translates as Shipwreck. (After Daniel Roseberry’s “Icarus” at Schiaparelli and Alessandro Michele’s “Vertigineux” or Dizzying at Valentino, designers this week have been courting risk with their titles, never mind their creations).
In a preview, de Saint Sernin explained the inspiration originated in a music video duet between Seal and Mylène Farmer on a raft adrift at sea, combined with a ship-shaped headpiece from a JPG show in 1997 that was recreated in Look 16. From there, he went underwater, underworld and underwear; as with JPG’s witty explorations across decades of défilés, there was a story for every outfit.
Starting with a pale seafoam, off-the-shoulder corset laced LdSS-style and a sequin-scaled skirt—let’s call her a mermaid provocateur—the suggestive line-up spanned mythological (Cupid wearing little more than a harness of pheasant feather wings and the designer’s leather briefs, his modesty draped with blue silk); figurative (a nearly-nude bodice defined by an anchor motif attached to a delicate lace skirt); and caricature (a ghostly bride and groom in revisited period dress elaborately embellished with feathers and beading). From a thirst-trap pirate to a woman seemingly draped in sails, these couture character studies attested to de Saint Sernin’s imagination (each beginning with a hand-drawn sketch) while also justifying a wide range of otherwise unrelated ideas.
For all the Gaultier guest designers, this prestigious stint has offered access to unparalleled savoir-faire, and de Saint Sernin coaxed eye-catching workmanship, both traditional (plissé Grès in swirling, sexy constructions) and innovative (a dark gray latex that simulated crocodile skin only bouncier). These designs, along with a micro-fishnet T-shirt dress covered with crystals, could easily lure the likes of Kylie Jenner, Troye Sivan and Sabrina Carpenter, who have boosted LdSS’s profile.
Other creations reanimated JPG’s camp, even if this wasn’t entirely de Saint Sernin’s intention. “I’m not typically known as a designer to have a sense of humor,” he noted. “And it’s very serious for me to show myself as a couture designer for the first time; we worked extremely hard on creating each and every one of these looks.” Still, he wanted to embrace the lightness: “When you meet Jean Paul, he still is so much fun, so I wanted to inject a little bit of that.”
There is talk that LdSS might be the last in this experimental run of guest designers. If so, this show provided a lusty romp that closed with the 34-year-old designer appearing in an angular corset and britches. It wasn’t the Gaultier run down the catwalk, but that snatched waist felt true to them both.
