This week's seven-page long profile in the New Yorker details John Paul Gaultier's previous life as a pet owner, his distorted image of his own beauty (he calls his profile "nothing special") and his early obsession with Madonna, but buried deep inside the piece is a little gem that gives us a window into Gaultier's past, which almost included a different fashion house all together:
In 1996, Gaultier says, he met with Bernard Arnault, the chairman of the fashion conglomerate LVMH, which owns Dior, Fendi, Givenchy, and Céline, among other brands. Gaultier thought that perhaps he would go to Dior, which was looking for a new head couturier. But Arnault wanted John Galliano, who had been a success at Givenchy, where he had spent the previous year, to take over Dior, and, according to Gaultier, Arnault wanted him to take Galliano’s place at Givenchy. Gaultier was dismayed. “I thought Givenchy was very bourgeois,” he said. “I loved Saint Laurent, Dior, Cardin. Givenchy was not a dream of mine. So I told Mr. Arnault no, I was not dreaming of Givenchy.” Instead, he opened a couture house under his own name. He showed his first couture collection in 1997; Nicole Kidman bought one of the first pieces. “My God, Nicole Kidman!” he said. “I had a client!”
Are you wondering the same thing that I am? What if Gaultier took over as the Queen Supreme of Givenchy? What a changed world it would be...
via The Cut
[FANTASYLAND]
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