At the origins of the brand itself, repurposing is Jean Paul Gaultier incarnate.

From art to fashion, very pop dada
Repurposed objects are a part of the history of contemporary art, most notably with Marcel Duchamp’s “ready-mades”, everyday objects turned into works of art simply because the artist decreed they were art.
We could (yes!) dare to compare Jean Paul Gaultier’s can to Marcel Duchamp’s urinal (Fountain), which was presented in 1917 at the Armory Show in New York.






Combinations, quirks
The accumulation of elements makes new ones possible; in this way ties sewn together become a patchwork that can be turned into a skirt or a dress. Straw placemats can turn into clothing and a fan can become the bustier of an elegant couture gown.













Beauty
The Jean Paul Gaultier perfumes have had fun translating these codes and continuing on with the repurposing.  From the metal can to the snow globe, the collector’s editions have carried the message: lighter, matriochka doll, Swiss cuckoo clock; music box, keychain, jewelry.  From the packaging to the ideas, the Gaultier universe has been translated into perfumes with the same repurposing vision.


Jewelry & accessories
In his early days, Jean Paul Gaultier didn’t hesitate to scour hardware and building material stores in search of things he could turn into accessories.  In this way, a shower hose became a belt.  Electrical supplies once assembled became jewelry.  Created with his friend and associate Fracis Menuge, the first pieces of jewelry were supposed to light up, but they didn’t always work!  After the can, tea infusers became earrings.  Bobbins of colored thread, threaded together become a necklace. A pineapple purse.  A draped belt held in place by a snail.  Let’s not forget the punk movement’s safety pins.  A Prévert style surrealist poetic inventory reconstructs fashion that is very tongue in cheek.


Bakery
For his exhibit at the Cartier Foundation in 2004, Jean Paul Gaultier did not want a musty museum-like retrospective.  He imagined no longer having the traditional tools for a collection (fabric, seamstresses…) and decided to use an everyday object instead: bread.  In a new world made of flour and water, a décor of Venetian blinds made of baguettes, curtains made of beads of bread… “Pain couture” (designer bread) was a collection of ready-to-eat models, crinolines of wicker and bread, necklaces of cookies, Charleston dresses in cat’s tongue biscuits and petit beurre cookies.  Striped breads even dared to parallel the sailor’s shirt.  At the same time, a real bakery was distributing bread while young women were dressed up as baker’s apprentices.

The Beginning
When beginning a career as a designer (before even imagining becoming a “couturier”) money is at the heart of the problem.  Resourcefulness becomes a key talent and forces you to look for objects and manufactured elements that already exist, and to give them new life as fashion.
Already, in his first collection, repurposing was the common theme for his original and atypical creations.  Having had a hard time finding what he needed at fabric manufacturers he tells the story (in La mode pour la vie) of how he made do: “I went straight to the Saint-Pierre fabric market.  I used everything I could find: unfinished embroidered canvas imported from Hong-Kong for the French market, tapestries representing country scenes in the style of the 18th century.  I used braided straw that I had brought back from the Philippines to make bras, Indies and raw silk and requisitioned some jacquard towels I had designed for Yves Delorme. This collection was in everyway an upholsterer’s collection.”


Childhood
Already as a child, with his teddy bear Nana, Jean Paul Gaultier had fun repurposing the bear from his boring bear life into a doll.  He tells the story (in La mode pour la vie pg 28): “I made him hair with thread dyed using my grandmothers colored shampoo and made him up.”










In the can
The lowly everyday can, usually used for peas, once emptied gives itself over to the designer’s imagination.  The ridged metallic cylinder becomes noble as a silver bracelet with a tribal air.
In A nous deux la mode the photo-story as a biography, published by Flammarion in 1990, four photos illustrate the dialogue between Jean Paul Gaultier, the imaginative child, and his grand mother:
-Grandmother: But, Jean-Paul! Stop digging through the trash!
-J. P. G.: Look at how pretty it is!
-G.-M.: It’s an old can of William Saurin peas! It’s dirty!
-J. P. G.: Not at all, it’s a bracelet.
The bridge between art and fashion, Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup can had already turned the every day object into an iconic artwork, which was revisited in France by Arman and the new realism.  Useful, Jean Paul Gaultier’s can became a fashion accessory, its ultimate incarnation before becoming the iconic perfume can.





Furniture
For Roche Bobois, Jean Paul Gaultier had fun playing with his visual codes and applying them to furniture. He had already created extravagant models for the VIA in 1990, but they were produced by Roche Bobois.  Ben Hur takes along on his race an armchair that resembles a roman chariot ready for circus games.  A stack of suitcases become a practical dresser.  Mirror mirror on the wall, falsely transported into the shape of a devil.
















A new Life
Right from his childhood, Jean Paul Gaultier has a world vision that allows him to see the objects he comes across with a different idea of function and finality “I was still in high school when I realized that work clothes could be repurposed.”  In this way he shook up conventions and boundaries and ennobled the banal. Work clothes, sports clothes (boxing, fencing…) inspired by chance encounters and discoveries; his eye is always ready to transform things.


Surrealism with a pop sauce
In fashion, Elsa Schiaparelli always played with objects in her hats: pork chops, shoes, the brain or a dress with drawers… but it was always in an almost surrealist manner.  With Jean Paul Gaultier, it is more of a pop approach, pop in its initial meaning of popular, a part of the everyday which is transformed and ennobled.  Finding beauty in the simplicity of everyday objects and breathing new life into them.