The French fashion designer on Eurotrash, proposing to Madonna, and the new cabaret show about his wild life
Conical bras, striped sailor tops and gender-neutral designs… Jean Paul Gaultier has been in fashion for more than 50 years. He has dressed Madonna, Björk and Lady Gaga, and was elevated to cult status in the 1990s as the co-presenter of Channel 4’s Eurotrash, with Antoine de Caunes. The French designer recently turned 70, and his wild, eventful life will be celebrated in a song-and-dance cabaret, Fashion Freak Show, at the Roundhouse in London this summer.
Have you always had a strong connection with the UK?
Yes! The first time I came to England, to London, it was like somewhere very close to Paris, but completely different. The people, the architecture, the weather, the spirit. It was beginning of the 1970s, so I saw Tommy the movie, The Rocky Horror Show, the punks. For me, it was something incredible; nobody else but the English could do something like that. I love the eccentricity and the freedom. Whereas in France we are a little bourgeois: there’s no sense of humour, no sense of self-criticism. You have always to be so nice and so elegant. Truly, I hate that, and I love that in England there is a contrast: fantasy is completely accepted.
