Editor’s note: As part of Vogue Runway’s ongoing efforts to document the history of fashion shows, we are closing out 2025 by adding newly digitized shows to the site. This fall 1991 ready-to-wear collection was presented in Paris at the Cirque d’Hiver on March 15, 1991.
At Jean Paul Gaultier’s fall 1991 presentation, more than 125 looks were shown over the course of about an hour. The Cirque d’Hiver space was fitted with gaudy blue velvet curtains, and models walked within a blue circus ring painted with yellow stars on a surface slick enough for ice-skating. As if that weren’t enough, for the finale, can-can dancers descended from either side of the curtain, swinging their frothy skirts and kicking their legs high up into the air. Plus c’est plus.
Equal to this calculated chaos were the garments themselves. The through-line was Gaultier’s transposition of elements of the 1890s to the 1990s. The first model out was a dead ringer for either Yvette Guilbert or Jane Avril. Both were famous French fin de siècle cabaret performers and favorite subjects of painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec; the former sang, the latter danced.
Dressing, like acting, is a form of self-transformation. All throughout his career, Gaultier took that idea farther than most, making clothes that could be worn more than one way. Here, one of his main preoccupations was rectangular or square pattern cutting. Left loose, the fabric draped and created handkerchief hems. In the case of whittle-waisted jackets, the ends were folded up and buttoned at the bottom center of the back, creating a pretty volume.
Wildly colored tights accessorized many of the looks. Pants often had side stripes at the inner and outer side seams, which created an illusion of narrowness. Candy-cane stripes and trim waistcoats seemed inspired by what weight lifters, barkers, and ringmasters wore in old-timey circuses.
Skaters, ice skates, and skating-like costumes underlined the winter theme, which was also emphasized by faux-fur trim at the wrist, hem, or throat. There’s a photo of Toulouse-Lautrec wearing Avril’s feather boa that could have been on a mood board for this collection; a more contemporary reading calls to mind Cruella de Vil.
Among the sub-themes was an activewear motif; see the hooded anoraks and sleek leggings. Gaultier also indulged his fervent Anglomania. Pieces with handprints on them read as Lascaux–meets–Vivienne Westwood’s Nostalgia of Mud. A model with a face-obscuring head-to-toe bodysuit seemed to pay homage to Leigh Bowery.
According to contemporary reports, the show was delayed an hour due to door crashers. Those who made it past the bouncers were greeted, wrote Reuters, by dancers who “gave out sweets and bouquets of violets at the door, while a barroom singer crooned old French ballads.” For Gaultier, life has always been a cabaret.
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