“Le Naufrage,” Ludovic de Saint Sernin titled his take on Jean Paul Gaultier’s couture as the eighth (and youngest) guest designer to lead the esteemed atelier for a season.
The French term, which translates to “Shipwreck,” was inspired by Mylène Farmer and Seal’s “Les Mots” music video, in which the French-English duo performs their dramatic duet from a raft lost on rowdy waters. It was also inspired by an eery boat-shaped headpiece that appeared on Gaultier’s runway in 1997. Much like the namesake couturier, de Saint Sernin’s sartorial explorations led him to places of kinky sophistication and fierce otherworldliness.
This was de Saint Sernin’s first strike at couture, and the results were equal parts classic (like structured, feathered gowns with frilly, sheer underlayers) and futuristic (like leathery, latex dresses that unfurled over the body with mermaid-like cadences). Across the runway, the designer’s muses embodied all sorts of characters — lustful pirates, posh patricians and mysterious sirens among them — nodding to Gaultier’s fanciful fashion storytelling.
On the runway, de Saint Sernin’s more mystical models wore delicately knit dresses that strategically concealed the human form and rope-clad gowns with illusory nude finishes. His regal ball invitees dramatized the aristocratic uniform with extreme menswear corseting, crystal-covered slim dresses, matrimonial lace creations and sensual see-through sections all over.
There was one angelic figure who sported a pair of gold wings with just one slab of blue fabric draped over his waist, nodding, perhaps, to Gaultier’s divine Spring 2007 couture collection, which featured all sorts of celestial recreations of Renaissance angel paintings and motifs. Elsewhere, there was an equally holy white gown that referenced the obsessed-over dress in Absolument Fabuleux, the 2001 French comedy in which Gaultier himself stages a faux fashion show. It was clear that each look told a story of its own.
In any case, all of de Saint Sernin’s models boasted slick, chaotic, wet hair — as if truly lost aboard the designer’s whimsical, hedonistic and ethereal shipwreck. But unlike their sinking fate, this collection offered an expert twist on the vast Gaultier archive with much promise.
See Ludovic de Saint Sernin’s Jean Paul Gaultier Couture Spring 2025 collection in the gallery above.
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