A Jean-Paul Gaultier jacket

OK, it’s actually Junior Gaultier, from the first collection, which must have been Spring/Summer 1988.  My mother and I had colluded to get my father to pay for the two of us to go to Paris, after my French teacher urged his class to go to France to improve our language skills before the summer exams.  As he so presciently said, “I hear a lot of people speak French there.”

I had only one destination in mind: Jean-Paul Gaultier’s flagship store on the rue Vivienne.  We went there the first evening we arrived, to find it closed; but I was floored by it - the mock 19th-century French design alongside the mosaic-fragment and concrete floor; the giant, indecipherable digital clock in the wall; the peep holes and videos in the Victorian galerie Vivienne that ran alongside the store.   

The next morning, we were back.  The staff wore wide-legged wool trousers that moved with a fluidity I had never seen before: fabric did not move like that in my world; it made them look as if they were gliding just above the floor.  These were objects that had a power I had never encountered; clothes that looked even better worn than they did on the rails - and they looked astonishing on the rails - behind heavy glass doors on rubber rollers, which would float back when pushed by these charming avatars of glamour who hovered unobtrusively behind you waiting to help.   And of course, all these transformatory garments were eye-wateringly, prohibitively expensive.   

I saw this jacket, and my mother encouraged me to try it on.   The changing room was a huge oxidised-metal drum, which the assistant would swing open for you, and close with a magnetic clang.  I was alone with a green long-sleeved T-shirt (which I also still have), and this jacket.  I can almost taste the sensation I felt then.  

Today, over 20 years later, the shoulders on this jacket look comically, ludicrously wide; almost on a par with David Byrne's iconic suit from "Stop Making Sense".  But this was the 80’s, at their peak, and I looked in the mirror and saw a fucking super-being looking back at me.  I would have been happy with the T-shirt, but my wonderful, generous mother bought me the jacket too.

This jacket's crowning moment was at a party that summer.  I recall a thuggish oaf at school (whose nickname actually was “Oaf”) relentlessly taking the piss out of me for wearing it. But what intrigued me even then was that I really didn’t care - because I was so sure of this jacket: it was unimpeachable, an impervious coat of armour.  If he didn’t ‘get’ it, it said more about him than about me.  Then, Lucy Taylor, who was (as I recall) pretty foxy and feisty, came up to me and said, “Is that a Jean-Paul Gaultier jacket?  It looks fucking amazing...”  and then walked away.  
 
And that was probably the moment when the power of a man’s dress to shape the way he feels about himself crystallized for me.  I’ve heard all the arguments about how ludicrous this is, and how frivolous fashion is; but they don’t wash with me, I’m afraid.  Nothing could take from me how I felt at that moment.  Lucy Taylor, wherever you are, thank you.