A Collector’s Love of Gaultier’s Powerful Visions in Print From i-D Magazine to Vogue

Roberto wearing a jacket he made in the 90s.

While researching for a blog post on Gaultier’s “Les Pied Nickelés” collection of Fall/Winter 1990/91 I reached out to clothes designer Roberto Silva who I’d seen post a copy of a magazine advert for that collection on Instagram.

Who’d have thought that this encounter would have ended up in such an interesting discussion about fashion magazine adverts and a deep love of the creative process? The following is about half of the conversation we had.

What got you started with your magazine advert collection?

When my sister began college, she and her friends were starting to collect The Face magazine, so I got to look at them and realised that fashion was definitely my thing. I remember the clothing being presented in such a new, different, exciting way that it was impossible to look the other way. The combination of graphics, art and the photographer’s vision made it all look brand new and not only about clothing.

When I started studying these advertisements, I saw that they were more than just fashion adverts to sell a t-shirt, and I understood, as I’d sort of trained my eye with magazines like i-D, The Face, and Blitz. I understood that it took a lot of work from the photographer with the lighting, the quality of the graphic designer’s work, the stylist’s work and the design of the clothing. The whole package works for me.

I follow Kenny Campbell on Instagram, the makeup artist who did all of those adverts with Gaultier. He shared a picture once of him at the photo shoot for the Gaultier Fall/Winter 1989 “Women Among Women” collection with those headpieces, with restraints, and they have all sorts of straps. And this is for a show and inspired by women in the military, and he has a picture of that headpiece on himself. At the time, he was one of the few people who worked with and believed in the makeup label Shiseido that came from Japan. So, he had a sort of exclusive and did all of his work with this makeup line when he did work for Gaultier.

My sister’s boyfriend at the time was a great graphic designer, and we’d be working together in the same area for our homework. He was literally cutting, glueing, photographing and manipulating, and that’s one of the other things that got me into advertisements because I knew the amount of work that was put into it.

You can see in those adverts references to Bauhaus, to turn of the century painters and artists, and even hairstyles from the ’60s or the 70s. All of this mixture is something that I’ve always been interested in.

Some of those adverts also appeared in the Italian Vogue, the British Vogue or many other magazines, and I couldn’t afford them. This is going to sound extremely silly, but I remember that when I grew up, I said that I was going to buy all of these magazines somehow, and I did. I started collecting from eBay, and at the beginning, I was just getting the magazine clippings, and they were in such a bad state, you know, because people just ripped the pages out.

As a collector, I’m sure you’ll appreciate that missing a piece of the page decreases the value. During the pandemic, I did a lot of digging on the internet, and I was looking for websites that actually show you the photos of the pages of the magazines they were selling, and that’s how we started to put together the database of adverts.

Then I realised that the ads came either in March, October, February, or maybe September issues, but September is too early because it was more about other sponsors, and you know some of them came with couture collections, which were a more expensive and bigger magazine. So I started putting the database together, and then I started working through every magazine per month, and wherever I could find them, I started asking sellers on eBay if there was a Gaultier ad in the magazine, and to see it. Then I would just find the cheapest of that issue and buy it, even if he wasn’t from this person, which I felt a little bad about!

So little by little, I started acquiring these magazines. I have a friend who’s a music collector, and we call each other when we buy another magazine. He buys the deluxe editions, and I buy the regular magazines, and we call each other, and we’re like “Oh no, you did it again”.

POS for “Les Pied Nickelés” F/W 1990/91 designed by Thierry Perez © Jean Paul Gaultier.

Thierry Perez

Thierry Perez is a fashion illustrator, graphic designer, and photographer working with Jean Paul Gaultier, Gianni Versace, and almost every major magazine around the globe, including Vogue, Glamour, and Elle. 

Thierry Perez left college for work in 1985 after Jean-Paul Gaultier asked him to illustrate his collections. Perez worked exclusively for Gaultier until 1991, producing press adverts, show invites, packaging and point of sale, as well as surface patterns for his clothing. He’s even been a model for Gaultier shows. 

“Back then there were no computers, I cut the golden frame with a knife!”

What do you find so attractive about Gaultier’s clothing adverts?

I was fascinated by the amount of work put into it. One of the things I liked about Gaultier’s ads, for both the main line and Junior line, was that they were extremely strong images, telling a very strong story, and that was exactly what got me into collecting them. Not only that, but I also saw the handwork of them. I recently had a brief contact with the illustrator of many of Gaultier’s ads, Thierry Perez. I shared scans of some print adverts he’d created that he hadn’t got copies of.

These were the early stages of digital graphic design, so my understanding is that Thierry’s works were literally images cut and glued and photographed, then cut and glued and photographed again, which were the early stages of graphic design.

I have one of the Gaultier adverts from Spring/Summer 1989 in an edition of Vogue US, where you can see how the images have been cut and pasted onto a white piece of paper and photographed again. The images are blown up so much that you can’t see a pore in the model’s face, as the photos were rephotographed so many times. And the colours were completely distorted, which I thought was genius. 

I think that these images were amazing with their references to pop culture, including comic books, movies and art. You can see the Richard Lindner references in the women’s Collection “Les Rap’Pieuses” of Spring/Summer 1990, which I thought was amazing and then more of his influences in Fall/Winter 1990.

You had the famous “Fantômas” collection of Fall/Winter 1989-90, based on a fictional comic book character. Gaultier was drawn to the character’s mysterious and villainous persona, and he incorporated elements of Fantômas’s costume and style into his collection. There were all sorts of references in Gaultier’s collections that I feel Thierry mirrored very wisely into every advertisement.

I’m sure you’ve seen the black and white photo of the older men and women with the cowboy hats and the Junior Gaultier belt. This advert was enough to make me want that belt, so when it comes to design, they’ve achieved their goal.

As technology evolved, photos became more sophisticated and image manipulation became more commonplace. The collaborations with Jean-Baptiste Mondino, the fashion photographer and music video director, in videos and editorials were amazing, especially the work he did with Madonna. Another French music video director and photographer, Stéphane Sednaoui, was a main photographer and editorialist for The Face magazine. He was supported by Gaultier at the beginning of his career and even worked in front of the camera as the face of Jean-Paul Gaultier’s brand between 1982 and 1984.

Junior Gaultier press advert for “Around the World in 168 Outfits” S/S 1989 © Jean Paul Gaultier.

Do you kind of think that the limited resources and finances that many designers had when they started out gave them the drive and the creativity?

Yes, it makes you more resourceful and pushes you, and this process is what, in so many cases, gives amazing results. I recently read Gods and Kings, which looks at Alexander McQueen and John Galliano. It covers Galliano’s upbringing and how he first started, right from his first graduation collection, where he had nothing, and his struggle fuelled his creativity.

Many of the things we saw flourishing in the 80s came from very simple beginnings. I mean, you know, i-D magazine started life as a pamphlet, right, published as a landscape format hand-stapled fanzine, with text produced on a typewriter. The Face magazine was quite thin, and all of its images were streetwear and clubwear.

It was just people pulling together clothes to go to Blitz or Heaven nightclubs. Take Leigh Bowery, for instance; his clothes were amazing, and I don’t think he had much money, but he still changed the landscape for drag queens and performance art. Throughout this decade, people did very well and got funded and expanded, reaching many more people.

In terms of fashion, whether it’s an editorial, an ad or a piece of clothing, I always admire all those people who went ahead, completely out of their comfort zone, and just grabbed elements from everywhere and made them work together. The creativity, you know, God’s energy, was in the air, and all of these people were putting it together, and I think those times were amazing.

Roberto, you mentioned Bauhaus and hairstyles of the ’60s, and I wondered if there’s a certain way that you can use inspiration from the past to make what you’re creating timeless? When I look at Rick Owen’s cropped bomber jackets, their silhouettes remind me of the Junior Gaultier brand, which makes me think that Junior is just as relevant now as it was in the 80s.

Some people have the talent to be able to dissect and keep those elements that are part of a timeless style, for instance, the leopard print, which is something that we’ve been seeing forever, but it remains a classic right?

So you’ve got that pattern, but how do you make it relevant for the present? Well, you use shapes, and for instance, you apply it to a trucker jacket, and that’s another element that you know is going to be timeless. So you have a current classic, or you can continue to push it forward in time.

An example is draping; the use of draping has been seen in clothes since Roman times, with clothing wrapped around the body to create shapes. I’m talking about garments more than the history of fashion because if you continue to the 50s, draping was taken to a whole other level, and then you move on to Galliano. These people have the actual talent to see a classic element of clothing or another piece of design and manipulate it in a way that they can mix it with something new and continue to push it forward.

I am not very familiar with Rick Owen’s clothing, but I’m familiar with their shoes and sneakers. These remind me of the Chuck Taylors in a way with that rubber top at the front and the white rubber sole and they are high tops so I feel like that shape which was classic and was actually designed for sports to support the foot on a baseball field has elements being brought into the present, with other things that are actually relevant to now and will continue to be pushed forward. Now we have materials that are much more water resistant, as well as resistant to time and with better performance, so that continues to push you know the element forward.

When I saw the Junior pieces, I was fascinated because I saw a T-shirt right, but what’s a T-shirt without the modern element to it? I’m talking about what came after the Modernist movement, with the actual elements of function, form and shape included with something classic, to move it forward. So, when you see a trucker jacket made of leopard print, it’s wow, this is something that I’ve never seen before, but you have seen it before, in the separate elements that these designers have had the talent to put together.

So that led to “Junior knockoffs”. I was just so fascinated with the jacket, I just had to have it, but where am I going to buy it? Well, you know, I can buy the fabric, and I can make it! So I have a couple of things that I wore happily, without telling anyone they were original Gaultier, you know.

We’ve talked about magazines, but is there anything else that influenced you in the 80s?

Music, of course. You and I are about the same age, and you know about growing up in the 80s. In Mexico, my country, we had music mostly coming from Europe and only rock and pop from the United States, which was good and bad at the same time. When I moved to the United States, House was emerging from the ashes of disco. It wasn’t just music; in many areas of creativity in the ’80s, amazing things were happening. I remember graphic design being amazing, which was influencing advertisement design and obviously fashion.

When I was eleven, I was listening to Duran Duran’s first album, and many others, and obviously, all of these artists presented a strong image. I remember when I saw ABC’s King Without A Crown video, and the women in it were wearing Vivienne Westwood, and I was like wow that’s my thing. I also remember watching over and over Dead Or Alive’s Rip It Up tour of 1987 in Tokyo, where Pete Burns was wearing a Jean Paul Gaultier Jacket.

Jean Paul Gaultier was very popular in America in the mid-80s, and you see his clothes in so many videos that I remember. I remember specifically seeing them in the African-American community through the R&B and House music videos.

There were a lot of his clothes, the show pieces that were produced, that were amazing for him, in terms of publicity. I remember going to a film festival in Mexico and seeing Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, and I was fascinated with the costumes that Gaultier produced and the script itself.

It gave Gaultier a platform, and perhaps all of that revenue allowed him to create the Junior line. He was a visionary when it came to reaching a younger audience and globalisation. I think it was a great business idea, to be honest with you, and even though I couldn’t afford it or I didn’t have a place to buy it, it was such a strong collection and not just another secondary line.

There were a lot of high-profile fans of Gaultier. You’ve mentioned Pete Burns, and I remember Nena Cherry wearing a lot of Gaultier, as well as modelling for the “Rhapsody in Blue” collection of 1990. Dave Gahan from Depeche Mode practically lived in that cropped leather Junior Gaultier Perfecto jacket. 

Yes, the jacket with the oval metal tag, which made it look so special, and I’d never seen anything like it before. I remember when I first saw videos from the documentary of Depeche Mode’s 101 live album with my limited resources, I went to a cobbler, and I asked them to put a little layer of foam in my Oxford shoes to look like Dave Gahan and Mark White from ABC. I cut my denim jeans to make them into shorts, and I wore my sister’s jacket that was cropped and was a perfecto jacket, and you know, people were amazed that I was so into fashion, and they said I should do something about it, so I started college in 1989. For the next four years, I was devoted to fashion and devoted to magazines, obviously, as in Mexico, magazines and videos were the only connection to the rest of the world.