Editor’s be aware: As a part of Vogue Runway’s ongoing efforts to doc the historical past of vogue reveals, we’re closing out 2025 by including newly digitized reveals to the location. This fall 1998 couture assortment was offered in Paris on July 17, 1998.
Modern experiences of Jean Paul Gaultier’s fall 1998 couture provide two backstories. Reuters wrote that the fashions had been styled after “femmes fatales”—think about Esther Cañadas in a sweater and plaid skirt and Anneliese Seubert within the deepest purple velvet as a latter-day Brigitte Bardot and Maria Callas, respectively. Then there’s the Yves angle. The New York Occasions famous that when Gaultier appeared for his bow, he “instructed Pierre Bergé, Saint Laurent’s president, who was within the entrance row, that he had created an homage to Saint Laurent.” This was possible a reference to the finale particularly. The present got here to a romantic shut with Tanel Bedrossiantz and Teresa Lourenco showing below a cloud of tulle sporting complementary Aran fisherman’s sweaters. Hers featured a cross and a coronary heart, and his learn Je t’aime. They appear to nod to Yves Saint Laurent’s matrioshka-inspired cocoon bride of 1965.
This assortment did certainly have the excessive class related to YSL (whose successor, Gaultier, was usually mentioned to be), but it surely was signature Gaultier by way of and thru. As with ready-to-wear, the designer’s method was trickle up. Bomber, puffer, monitor go well with…convey it on, make it couture, and add some intercourse enchantment. Beaded bras had been uncovered, and the again of a black column robe confronted in gold was engineered to appear like it was peeling open.
Excessive, double-waisted pants created a protracted line, and plumed arms reworked fashions into hybrid birds of paradise. Talking of feathers, they had been used to craft an Icelandic-style sweater, taking it from a comfortable staple to one thing extraordinary. Elsewhere, Vogue famous {that a} trench costume that paid homage to Greta Garbo required “19 fittings to get precisely proper,” and the Toronto Globe and Mail wrote {that a} “patchwork jacket was made from turn-of-the-century pearl-embroidered purses.” What a good distance Gaultier had come from upcycled tin cans and tea strainers.
