Madonna’s Eyes and Doves on Fire “Photography Maniacs” F/W 1992-93

Jean Paul Gaultier’s Fall/Winter 1992–93 Photography Maniacs collection focuses on image-making and observation. It reflects on how fashion is seen, recorded, and consumed.

In my effort to document a Junior Gaultier piece for each season, the label was in existence, I’ve had to revert to a mainline piece, despite having a Junior Gaultier (below right) vest that I think is from fall/winter 1992-93.

This long-sleeved t-shirt, despite its simplicity, is a piece that I like, as well as the accessories that went with the collection. Also, I think the show is one of Gaultier’s most entertaining, most inclusive, and most surreal. And it is another example of a show where the women’s collection and the men’s share the runway together.

There’s not much to say about this shirt as it’s pretty much what you see is what you get! A black cotton long-sleeved top with a silver front piece that has a print of a pair of eyes on it. The silver material isn’t sewn onto a cotton front; it’s a single layer. Of course, it looks a lot better when you are Anthony Kiedis from Red Hot Chilli Peppers on the front of Details Magazine from July 1992. Incidentally, it looks like it has thumb holes from the cover, but they must have been added for the shoot, as they aren’t in my t-shirt.

The show

A clue to the name of the men’s collection is the large photographic tripods on the runway, although they are so close to the film cameras that they are hard to identify. This show starts with tunics and dresses over formal suits. Then cardigans over suits. Leather-look stitched patches on royal red jackets give an equestrian feel alongside jodhpurs and belts with decorative stitching like jean jacket pockets.

Wool-lined biker boots look warm and add to the functional look. Knitwear bears the winter snowflake motif that made it to the Junior Gaultier line. Leather-look appliqués mimic the harnesses of traditional Bavarian lederhosen, with Pippi Longstocking pigtails defying gravity.

Big rear pockets create a bustle and remind me of Vivienne Westwood’s 1996 “bustle bag” created in collaboration with Louis Vuitton and designed to be worn at the small of the back.

The show is punctuated with a grey-haired, bespectacled character shuffling along the runway with their chin disappearing into a roll-neck jumper. This was Karl Zéro, a French writer, actor and filmmaker, apparently portraying influential novelist Marguerite Duras. I don’t know the significance, but if you look at photos of Duras in later years, Zéro made a very good impression of her.

An item of clothing that was to make Madonna history makes an appearance. A long body-skimming pinstripe dress. No material covers the breasts, just straps running on either side of them, with strategically placed stars covering the model’s nipples. Madonna sported the same dress, minus the modesty stars, on the catwalk of the amFAR Extravaganza, recounting, “I was supposed to wear a top and jacket like Jean Paul’s, but at the last minute I decided it was better to go out topless!”

Photomontage of faces

Towards the end of the show, versions of this shirt appear on the runway at the same time. One shirt is worn by fashion model Ben McKnight, a handsome bald model, whose own face is printed on the front. Next to him, the model’s shirt has an enviously chiselled torso.

A print of a montage of people’s faces, ranging from Russian poets to male supermodels (including Ben McKnight’s), appears on jackets (and their linings), waistcoats, and trousers, highlighting the theme of the collection. This montage of faces appeared in the Gaultier Jeans collection that season, in the form of woven jacquard denim.

I wonder if this was the crossover point of Gaultier Jean’s coming into existence and Junior Gaultier being phased out?

Photographic accessories

The photographic theme is mirrored in the women’s collection, featuring various pieces of jewellery, including choker necklaces that incorporate both the eye motif and the male torso motif, earrings with lip images, and a bracelet that combines both eyes and lips. The men had belt buckles with lips on them.

Madonna, Tokyo 1987 © Herb Ritts Foundation. Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Herb Ritts

Herb Ritts was a leading American fashion photographer known for his beautifully printed black-and-white images of celebrities, supermodels, pop stars, and other cultural figures throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

He also worked for leading magazines, including Interview, Esquire, Glamour, GQ, Harper’s Bazaar, Rolling Stone, Time, Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Elle.

For me, a portrait is something from which you feel the person, their inner quality, what it is that makes them who they are.

Surrealist headpieces steal the show

Towards the end of the show, headwear with a surrealist element made an appearance. I think these pieces of wearable and surrealistically functional art are amazing. We had a toilet roll holder, A bulldog-clipped set of tarot cards with a magnifying glass, Rossy de Palma sporting a contraption of knitting needles and the start of a woollen scarf, with an image of a flamenco dancer posing majestically.

There were many of these headsets, with possibly the most disturbing being a crying model crowned with multiple metal arms tipped with a cigarette holder, a hand of playing cards, a pair of sunglasses, a jewellery box with trinkets, and, alarmingly, a revolver held to her temple, with her finger on the trigger. Some of these elements are captured in the pattern of the tie below.

The ad campaign featuring the model Tanel Bedrossiantz (below centre), photographed by Jean Baptiste Mondino, relies on these headpieces.

The finale of the show was spectacular. If models smoking on the runway wasn’t enough of a fire hazard, enter the one-man band with Catherine wheel fireworks spewing sparks and smoke on the back and side of his drum, and the end of his guitar. He was dressed all in white with two matching white doves perched on his shoulder. The birds were perfect professionals enduring the pyrotechnics.

Are they Madonna’s eyes?

Occasionally, on resale sites, I’ve seen the image on this top described as being Madonna’s eyes, but I can’t find any conclusive proof. Apparently, it was produced for Jean Paul Gaultier’s 1992 amFAR (the American Foundation for AIDS Research) Extravaganza. This makes sense; the same top with different graphics (Boxer) was in the Photography Maniacs show.

The amFAR evening was hosted by Madonna and photographer Herb Ritts, who had photographed Madonna and Jean-Paul Gaultier two years earlier in 1990. When you look at this photo of the pair, with its black and white high contrast format, and photos Herb Ritts took for the release of Madonna’s The Immaculate Collection in 1990, you can see similarities in the eyes. Madonna also had very full eyebrows during this period, so the rumour makes sense. I’ve looked at various photoshoots Ritts has done with Madonna over the 80s and early 90s and can’t find an exact match, including the photo Ritts lensed in 1987 entitled “Madonna (Eyes)”.

Jean Paul Gaultier’s Soleil line from the 1990s was a diffusion collection, known for its semi-sheer, stretch-tulle fabrics featuring bold, colourful graphic prints like flamingos, palm leaves, Op Art dots, and portraits. Launched as a more accessible extension of his mainline, it captured the era’s edgy street style through lightweight, summer-ready garments such as flowy maxi dresses, tunics, and sheer mesh elements – as seen in the ‘Les Touristes Japonaises au Louvre’ collection of Spring / Summer 1999.

As part of the Junior Gaultier collections from 1988 to 1995, this collection reflects the line’s evolving direction.