By my judgment, of all the brands that have visitor- designed Jean Paul Gaultier collections since the project started late- epidemic, Nicolas Di Felice is the greenest. His Courrèges album was actually the time this Gaultier collaborations concept was born: 2021. But if Di Felice has less airport experience than successors like Sacai’s Chitose Abe or Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing, it rarely showed at yesterday’s display.
In JPG’s headquarters, it was hotter than Hades, and it wasn’t just the air conditioning that had shut down the runway’s ventilation. Since bringing it to Courrèges, Di Felice has yanked it out of its history label stupor, making it a go-to tag for young people looking for great pvc separates that smile at its Space Age roots without glossing over them.
Di Felice was a boy in Belgium when Madonna second wore Gaultier’s cylinder blouse, but the European custom made a powerful impact: “For me and for so many gay, different people from the countryside—from everywhere in the universe —he represented Paris, a city where everything is possible. He was actually the first to honor various people. Everyone is aware of this, and it’s a good thing because he actually did it.”
The collection told a story about a Paris arriviste, who wears covered up clothes: jackets and dresses with long sleeves, long skirts, and necklines that climb up the face. Slowly, as the show progressed, the head emerged, then the shoulders, and by the end, dresses were peeling off the hips and hands were tucked into the gaps in the fabric in an erotic gesture similar to the one that caused such a stir at Di Felice’s last Courrèges show. The clothing also covered the entire spectrum of light-to-dark clothing.
For each of the looks there was one from the archive that inspired it on Di Felice’s board, but the collection’s fil rouge was the hook- and- eye. He used them as the connective tissue for the rectangles and squares he draped and twisted into his narrow, body-clinging shapes in gabardine de soie, gazar, and taffeta, fabrics that he has never been able to afford at Courrèges after discovering a fabric swatch embroidered with them in the archive.
“I was able to make drapes that wouldn’t be possible without this technique”, he said. And not only that, the hooks- and- eyes are manipulatable, and will allow the wearer to adjust their level of exposure. A slip dress was undone to the waist, exposing a sleeveless shell underneath which hooks, eyes, and other tools were applied like studs. Like the chainmail dress made of 40, 000 interconnected hooks and eyes, it is strong and fragile at the same time.