Jean Paul Gaultier S/S´20 Couture Collection

What really hit you watching Jean Paul Gaultier’s last-ever show is the astonishing influence his trademarks continue to have on fashion today. While we’re eternally aware that his fetishised lingerie, cage dresses and sailor boys grace the mood boards of many a fashion studio, it’s the stylists who benefit most from a Gaultier legacy that keeps on giving. The Théâtre du Châtelet was packed with some of the most powerful ones in the world, cheering and clapping at the high-octane retrospective that unfolded before our eyes: a bottomless well of inspiration for fashion shows and editorial, where a garter belt detail, a chapeau marin, or a gendarmerie boot can elevate the narrative to another level.

If there was ever a time and a place for a retrospective show, this was it: a digital age obsessed with finding authenticity in things, where watchdog influencers split-screen new collections with old, calling out designers for plagiarism left and right. In Gaultier’s case, you get the feeling he’d consider it flattery, even celebration, rather than theft. And so, he saluted the old rather than the new in an upbeat, nostalgic show that counted some 200 looks and opened with a funeral for his own fashion house. A tableau of black-clad models vogued in freeze-framed poses; evoking Madonna’s “Justify My Love” performance on the Girlie Show tour in the early ’90´s, as pallbearers danced their way down the sweeping staircase with a coffin. Karlie Kloss opened it to reveal look number one, a baby doll dress collaged from christening gowns.

If you wanted to read into it, the sentiments were endless: an illustration of the never-ending reincarnations of Gaultier’s own legacy, the ongoing recycling of his codes by other designers, and the positive, rather than negative, upcycling of ideas it entails. Boy George sang “Back to Black”, a reference to Gaultier’s Amy Winehouse show, and once the funeral was over the wake could begin. Through several acts, models and celebrities flexed Gaultier’s inclusive, subversive and camp muscles, reminding us all who was first to celebrate the non-binary, unconventional values so central to the present-day moment in fashion. Cone bras and men’s skirts (sadly Madonna, who breathed as much life into Gaultier’s career as he did into hers, was still touring in Portugal) on a ceaseless stream of diverse poseurs.

The models included Anna Cleveland, Erin O’Connor, Hannelore Knuts, Irina Shayk, Jade Parfitt, Joan Smalls, Jourdan Dunn, Karen Elson, Liu Wen, Winnie Harlow, Yasmin Le Bon, and the Hadids. The celebrities were out in force: Paris Jackson, Rossy de Palma and Dita Von Teese did their thing, while Coco Rocha revisited the Riverdance that forever tied her to Gaultier and fashion hearts. At the end, Gaultier himself was elevated in a throne formed by human hands; those of his atelier and famous friends, as designers including Christian Lacroix, Nicolas Ghesquière, Dries Van Noten, Mary Katrantzou and Isabel Marant applauded him. Sailor caps off to Jean Paul Gaultier. He might be leaving the show schedule, but his signature elements will surely appear in fashion shows for decades to come.