Get That Amazing Deconstructed London Skinhead Style in a Junior Gaultier MA-1 Flight Jacket “Boarding School” F/W 1988-89

Jean Paul Gaultier’s Fall/Winter 1988–89 Boarding School collection mixes British school uniforms with rebellious subcultural style. The result is a deconstructed take on tradition, combining discipline with attitude.

This is my favourite item of Junior Gaultier clothing, for its symbolic meaning, its uniqueness and the very practical reason of it being very warm! It is composed of the nylon arms of an MA-1 bomber jacket and the woollen body of an overcoat. Due to its size, I’m slightly unsure if it’s from the women’s “Boarding School” collection or if it spilt over to the men’s “Robin Des Bois” collection of the same year.

To me, whilst being a teen in the 80s, the MA-1 flight jacket was synonymous with the skinheads, alongside the bleached jeans and Doctor Martens boots. Interestingly, skinheads moved away from the Harrington jacket to the MA-1, designed by the US Air Force in 1949. By 1984, the company that was contracted to manufacture the MA-1 for the US military also made the jacket available wholesale to the public.

Gaultier has deconstructed the iconic MA-1 jacket in several ways to create a range of garments that subvert its military heritage. There has been a red quilted version with conical breasts, a cropped version (as in the advertising material below) and this fusion of working-class streetwear with the more formal overcoat.

The British street style of punks and skinheads

It’s well documented that Gaultier was obsessed with British street style, such as the punk and skinhead youth movements, both of which had distinctive attire accessorised by confrontational attitudes.

Gaultier explains “ . . . the raw side of punk, with its Mohawk haircuts, almost tribal makeup, allusions to sex, torn fishnet stockings, black, kilts, bondage straps, mixing of genders and materials—all that spoke to me, suiting me much better than some of the ossified conventions of the couture.”

Both movements had symbolic uniforms to express themselves and their position in society. Although both subcultures had working-class principles at their core, punks embodied a total rejection of conventional society, whilst skinheads exhibited a more militant working-class ethic.

The punk style, with its emphasis on distressed and altered garments, is one of the best examples of deconstruction in fashion. The concept of Deconstruction was first used by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in the 1970s and was the process of breaking down and analysing something to discover its true significance, which may be composed of multiple, and often conflicting, meanings.

Enjoy this meld of styles as you wish, and feel free to see your meanings within its composition.

• Is it a juxtaposition of the more casual service jacket fused with a more formal military coat?
• Is this deconstruction of the skinhead youth’s adopted uniform and the overcoat that a middle-class adult would have worn a social comment on the 80s class system?
• Was this street style just a way to give haute couture an element of a rebellious nature?

Gaultier’s Jean’s line, which followed on from Junior Gaultier, had a lot of elements of the punk and skinhead culture. If you check out this post, you’ll see me wearing a Gaultier Jean’s denim vest with safety pin fastenings.

London as an inspiration

In an Elle US interview, Gaultier discusses why London is his favourite source of fashion inspiration. “The English are so energising,” he says. “They have no fashion barriers. Going to London is like taking vitamin pills – it’s not just the street fashion that’s inspiring, it might be the colours of the bricks or the music- everything. In fact, all images inspire me.”

The Supreme collaboration

The ‘Flower Power Et Skinheads ‘collection of autumn/winter 1997, also known as the ‘Fight Racism’ collection, is one of Jean Paul Gaultier’s most famous and important collections. It was recently reworked through a Supreme collaboration. Pieces were designed using halftone images of skinheads, giving the feel of newspaper print and emphasising the cultural issues of the times.

Skull and crossbones

The ancient Greeks employed the skull and crossbones sign to mark tombs and cemeteries, making it one of the first documented applications. The Roman Empire later adopted the sign and used it to represent death and danger.

Unsurprisingly, the skull and crossbones motif has appeared in several collections. These include a skull and crossbones damask pattern from the Autumn/Winter 1995 ‘Mad Max‘ collection, the women’s “La Concierge est dans l’Escalier” from Spring/Summer 1998, and a bone pinstripe pattern from the men’s “Modern Retros” of Spring/Summer 1998.

Broach and belt from the “Boarding School” collection.

Suede shoes from the “Boarding School” collection.

This collection sits within the wider Junior Gaultier collections 1988–1995, which trace the evolution of the line across its most influential years.