Jean Paul Gaultier, Couture, AW11, Paris.
There are some designers who create clothes that have a great sense of movement, often through the sheer volume of fabric used in the garment or the amount of space between the body and the garment, or even through the lightness of the fabric that enhances the movements of the models.
It is one thing for garments to react to the movement of the body but quite another to manipulate and guarantee the perfect effect. There is a certain craft in the way that some couturiers will not leave fashion moments to chance. Not content to wait for just the right puff of wind to blow a skirt or jacket hem into a memorable position, they pre-empt the moment, carefully draping and supporting the fabric to create shapes that will look good all the time.
There were examples of this control in the recent couture collection for Autumn-Winter 2011, by Jean Paul Gaultier. From the carefully nipped waist of a scarlet leather coat, to the swirls of tiny beads encrusting another jacket, Gaultier had a way of building movement into his collection so that the clothes would have still felt full of life even if the models had been standing perfectly still. One particularly labour intensive example would have to be the use of feathers in varying sizes that crept up a jacket like fish scales, increasing in size as they reached the shoulders.
Note that this was also the collection with the inventive ballet shoes as seen in the post En Pointe Accessories at Jean Paul Gaultier».
Images from Vogue.co.uk»
