Chic black dresses by Jean -Paul Gaultier
FRENCH fashion icon Jean-Paul Gaultier opened up a new front in the battle over bras with “Free the nipple” slogans in his Paris Haute Couture show held early this month.
The flamboyant designer showed his support for a Florida teenager who was made to cover her nipples in bandages at her high school for not wearing a bra under her sweatshirt.
Gaultier said it was “scandalous” that a girl should be treated that way, and used his collection to support her.
He said that if “men had the right to go bare-chested, why not women?”.
A sexy black top is paired with black textured trousers.
And to hammer home the point he had a bare-chested male and female model walk the catwalk, each wearing see-through police visors with the legend, “Free the nipple” in French and English.
“You can see the nipples and the jewelry but you can’t touch,” he said.
“I don’t say that you must bare your breasts. I am very much for corsets and bras, clearly I like them,” said the designer who came up with Madonna’s famous conical bustiers.
“But a woman should be allowed to not wear a bra under her T-shirt,” he added.
Gaultier played with nipple visibility in four other looks in his autumn/winter collection that was a typically playful celebration of liberty and transgression.
“We are living in a quite policed world, and I was looking for a pretext to show freedom for all,” he said.
“I wanted to show that you can walk around with bare breasts without be attacked or aggressed. It’s all about freedom to enjoy yourself and not take life too seriously.”
Gaultier also teased convention by using the cigarette— the number one enemy of health authorities around the world—as the inspiration for a lot of his jewelry.
His heavily two-tone black and white show started with a run of “No smoking” slogans on jumpers and jackets, which the designer said was a play on “le smoking”, the French term for a tuxedo.
“We should be free to either smoke or not,” said Gaultier.