PHOTOS SANDRA DE FEUDIS

STYLING RICCARDO SLAVIK & ALESSANDRA PISTOLESI

MODELS ANTOINE & JISEOK AT THE CLAW

HAIR AND MAKE-UP LORENZO CHERUBINI

ALL CLOTHES JEAN PAUL GAULTIER FROM THE ARCHIVES OF RICCARDO SLAVIK & CLAUDIO TWILO

except where specified, accessories stylist’s own unless specified.

ALL SHOES DR MARTENS

What is an ‘archive’? Its vocabulary definition is ‘a collection of historical records relating to a place, organization, or family’, or the place where these are kept. Documents fortunately aren’t needed all the time or all at the same time so they can be kept, stored, protected and left for later generations. When it comes to clothes things get a bit more complicated. Fashion, as an applied art form has the distinct peculiarity of being at the same time visual, social, and ( somewhat) practical. Clothes are meant to be sold and worn, and as such they are subjected to the wear and tear our bodies put them through, therefore, if we consider our personal wardrobes our ‘archive’ of living, breathing Fashion we have worn in our style evolution, we are likely to find a motley crew of items in various degrees of disarray. Collectors acquire items and rarely touch them, a value of a ‘collection’ is partly in the pristine or semi-pristine state of its objects. For people like me who live the Fashion we acquire, keeping clothes in their perfect ‘as new’ condition is less important than the Image we can create of ourselves by wearing, styling and showing them off, our archive is for all intents and purposes a wardrobe. 

‘She loved Fashion and clothes, but she used both to her ends, she wasn’t a curator, she was a creator, she used dresses against character, turned them upside down, layered them in the most surreal ways.’

I wrote this about Anna Piaggi for Candy and I think it applies here too, she collected beautiful, historical clothes but she wore them all the time, she was the mannequin of her own archive. 

This was just a very elaborate and wordy way to introduce this special project. Although I’ve been a stylist since 1990, as Rejects magazine I’m nothing, I’m a figment of my imagination, I don’t expect press offices to care about my page, and I’m not particularly impressed with the latest fashions. I’ve decided to concentrate on personal archives because I myself have spent most of my money on clothes and have thankfully been very reluctant to throw them away, so there’s a wealth of material in my bedroom already, and I also happen to know a few people with good taste in fashion and a similar distaste for getting rid of old clothes. One of these people is Claudio.

Claudio is one of my oldest friends, I can’t even remember what year we met, I remember that the day we met, at a friend’s place, they locked us in the living room so we could talk about RuPaul, Kylie Minogue and various other vetero-normative topics in that vein ( apparently we were too gay even for our very gay friends). Something we soon found out we had in common ( tbh Kylie wasn’t one yet, as I still wasn’t a fan) was a love of Jean Paul Gaultier’s fabulously quirky clothes. We would meet in Milano’s Fashion District and go visit the Gaultier shop, he’d often buy stuff because he was working and still lived at home, I’d window-shop and sometime splurge on an accessory or a little Junior Gaultier thing. We used to get up in our Gaultier or Junior fineries and stroll around Milano, or go out to clubs, later raves, after hours… We lived our lives in those clothes, some we destroyed, some we lost, some were ‘abducted’ by friends, or lovers ( my German ex left Milano with my collection of Junior hats while I was on vacation, I miss them more than I ever missed him). Those clothes are part of our shared memories, a fashionable thread that binds our experiences.

This editorial isn’t just a celebration of Jean Paul’s Gaultier undeniable genius and timelessness, it’s also a celebration of our friendship and intersecting wardrobes. 

Reversible jacket Jean Paul Gaultier Pour Gibò FW 1987, mesh t-shirt and faux leather jeans Junior Gaultier, SS 1988 and FW 1992/93

 I think that everybody, by wearing the clothes, can see something in it. There is of course a t-shirt with a protest saying or whatever. So yes, you can express by the way of what you can evoke, you can even lie with your clothes. You can even put yourself in that beautiful way and show how beautiful you are, or hide you. There are many clothes that, I shouldn’t say that can make things, but can accentuate, can be a friend, and maybe help you feel a little more secure sometimes. Of course when women are wearing a trouser, it is different that wearing a miniskirt—it depends on the mood, and you can do both in the same day. But it’s different sensation and different approach. You can say a lot of things with clothes.

Jean Paul Gaultier 2013 interviewmagazine.com