Sandra‘s Closet

During Haute Couture S/S 2016 fashion week in Paris, Jean Paul Gaultier hosted a show that took the audience to the the wild clubbing days of the 80s, when Le Palace in Montmartre, was the center Parisian night life such as Studio 54 in New York. It was an homage to the creatures of the night, models with big hair were smoking cigarettes and drinking champagne while strutting down the runway in signature looks such as tuxedos, pajama suits, lingerie dresses and bomber jackets.

Gaultier’s style is unique and so are his catwalks. Nobody else is able to transform a fashion show into a party. I am always leaving in a good mood, ready to dance and party myself.

In the evening, to celebrate the occasion, Jean Paul Gaultier invited a few lucky ones for a spectacular dinner at the Grand Colbert. A night to remember, and not only by the surprises. A contortionist painted in gold welcomed the attendance while they had a cocktail.

Talking heads out of food cloches got lost in a surreal very funny conversation. The surprise showcase of Beth Ditto and Allanah Star, a Parisian night figure, popping out of a cake to wish the House of Gaultier a happy 40th anniversary, were some of the highlights of the dinner. Complete craziness abounded at the Paris brasserie, which gathered longstanding close friends including Farida Khelfa, Victoria Abril and Blanca Li, who at one point began chanting in unison “Jean Paul, Jean Paul.”

Among the fashionable guests was also Daphne Groeneveld who stars in Jean Paul Gaultier Classique‘s new fragrance campaign captured by fashion photographer Miles Aldridge.

Later the evening evolved into a dance fest, after each guest was given a cardboard mask with an image of Gaultier’s face to sport. A night to remember. Have fun exploring all the fun moments.

The scene at the Jean Paul Gaultier party

Alexina Graham, Daphne Groeneveld and Soo Joo Park

Jean Paul Gaultier with Blanca Li, Victoria Abril and Farida Khelfa

Manuel Puig and Marc Puig

Allanah Starr

Jose Manuel Albesa and model Hugo Marquez

Talking to Farida Khelfa

Marc Zaffuto and Emmanuel d’Orazio

Here you can spot me to the left taking great shots of Beth Ditto’s performance.

Beth Ditto

She is such a love! Beth Ditto, you literally rock!

A great honor to be invited by Monsieur Gaultier to such a spectacular dinner.

DJ Kiddy Smile

Reunited with Catherine Baba after our trip to Columbia last December.

Swiss girls: Erica Martinez and me

Alongside four decades in fashion, 2016 marks the first year the Gaultier fragrance label is being developed by Puig. The television ad is for both perfume blockbusters — Le Male for men and Classique for women. Its backdrop is a factory but, of course, with a twist à la Gaultier. While all of his iconography is evident — think women in corsets and men sporting striped shirts — the setting is industrial. Gaultier himself also appears in the clip, appearing at the very end of the advert.

LoL, Sandra

The new advertising for Jean Paul Gaultier Classique

The new advertising for Jean Paul Gaultier Le Male

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Photos: Courtesy of Jean Paul Gaultier, Images by Saskia Lawaks – Vogue, Images by Thomas Kelly – Say Who,  Access Fashion Media and © Sandra Bauknecht

The Elsa Schiaparelli brand, co-star of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new Costume Institute exhibition, is set to be relaunched by its current owner, Diego Della Valle, who purchased Schiaparelli’s trademarks and archives  in 2006, is on the hunt for a head designer which is said to be announced in October this year. Moreover, he has hired French model and actress Farida Khelfa as Schiaparelli’s spokeswoman.

Farida Khelfa

In July there will be the opening of the Maison Schiaparelli on Place Vendôme. The residence where the designer dominated the scene during the thirties and forties, her historical address revisited in a contemporaneous view maintaining the ateliers’ allure, where the new collection will be showcased. Starting March 2013, the first collection pieces will be presented. The new Schiaparelli universe, made up of very special collections representing her style well, with strong focus on accessories, for which Schiaparelli was the creator and protagonist. High quality fragrances and cosmetics, today, will exemplify her myth.

THE STORY OF ELSA SCHIAPARELLI (1890-1973)

When everything is forgotten this is what survives! In the theatre that is fashion, Elsa Schiaparelli plays a leading role. Absent from the fashion scene for over 60 years, Schiaparelli continues to inspire designers and by the very fact, many of her clever creations are still familiar to us: the seamstress stockman-shaped perfume bottle, her press clipping prints, signature exotic butterflies that flutter on hundreds of her models, also on hats, buttons, necklaces … And Shocking Pink that no longer shocks since it has been copied by so many others!

Mostly due to her shoe-shaped hat, with its heel pointed towards the sky, posterity associates Schiaparelli with the Surrealists. Yet this is foregoing a little quickly that, in her case, this influence is closely intertwined with a baroque culture: brought up in Rome where her family lived in the Corsini palazzo, Schiaparelli is the heiress of these Italian artists whose fantasy she imposed in France. Indeed her destiny awaited her in Paris. A destiny she encountered almost by happenstance having accompanied a friend visiting Paul Poiret, the famous couturier encouraged her and decided of her future. In 1927, Schiaparelli presented her first line of knits that announced sportswear, but it was not until 1930 that her style evolved towards a conquering and evanescent femininity that were to become her signature brand image.

Schiaparelli and Dali

In the 30’s, Haute Couture invented itself. Considered until then as suppliers, couturiers escaped and became the gods of an Olympus of clothing with evanescent shores. Not only did Schiaparelli quickly make a name for herself in this Olympus, she was given a nickname: Schiap!

To the tomboy running out of steam, she opposed a poetic and amusing elegance. A woman of fantasy that never ran out of ideas: hand- painted lobsters on chiffon muslin, the first zipper to be used as a fashion accessory, telescopic, spiral or ice cream cone hats, a feather hat simulating a sleeping chicken, bird cage hats…looking more attentively at Schiaparelli’s models, their line is fluid, naturally flowing over a woman’s body that it respects… The waist is in the right place, the bosom beautifully defined and the length of the skirts precisely as it should be.

With her infallible flair, Chanel immediately pinpointed her rival. She loathed Schiaparelli and the feeling was mutual. Indeed, Mademoiselle was quite annoyed that a foreigner might be trampling her turf. And, as if that wasn’t enough, just around the corner from her territory, in the shadow of the Vendôme column where Schiaparelli first set up shop in 1934 and took Paris by storm. Schiaparelli signed her most impressive collections between 1935 and 1940. Real fireworks. A suite of improvisations on a theme that she showcases and pushes to its ultimate limits: the circus theme, Commedia dell’ arte, butterflies, astrology, a beetle line, a pagan collection, inspired by Botticelli and the Birth of Venus.

It’s always easy to analyze a situation in the light of the final result, but how can one not make the correlation between the stormy electricity that preceded war and the sputtering of Schiaparelli’s genius at the same time?

Elsa Schiaparelli

It should be pointed out in passing that she was never more at ease than during the bustle that occurs before the presentation of a collection. She revels in creating under the gun, to come up with last minute solutions, to resolve insurmountable problems with one snip of her scissors featuring the same untamable and free audacity that is the very quintessence of Haute Couture.

LoL, Sandra

Photos: Courtesy of Schiaparelli