Petal & Pins

Last November, in anticipation of seeing the exhibition The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier:From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk, I created two Gaultier inspired designs for my Garden Fairy’s Wardrobe.

For fans of “the enfant terrible of French fashion” it will be no surprise that one of these was a corset.

For inspiration I chose the conical bra style he first showed in the early 1980s and which was famously worn by pop icon Madonna on her Blonde Ambition World Tour.

Here is my take on it for my garden fairy and some photos I took at the exhibition.

In the exhibition monograph, Jean Paul Gaultier thanks many including his teddy bear – which features in the exhibition wearing the cone bra he fashioned for it as a child!

“…thanks also to my teddy bear Nana who was my first model and without whom my whole career not to speak of the cone breasts, would not have been possible…”

In my post Good Things Come To Those That Wait I spoke of waiting for several years to see this exhibition. It was first shown in Montreal in 2011, then in Dallas, San Francisco, Madrid, Rotterdam, Stockholm, New York, London and finally Melbourne in 2014.

It was worth the wait – so much so that I went to see it twice on that weekend trip to Melbourne in November!