Gaultier's modern pirates according to Ludovic de Saint Sernin Le Naufrage, the first Haute Couture show of the young French designer

The protagonists of the Haute Couture show by Jean Paul Gaultier, designed by Ludovic de Saint Sernin, are a band of travelers lost at sea. With Le Naufrage, French for “shipwreck,” the designer presents his very first haute couture collection as the temporary creative director of the brand founded by the enfant terrible of fashion in the 1980s. Saint Sernin is the eighth designer to take on the role since 2020, when the fashion house announced that it would continue to produce shows without Gaultier but with the support of a series of guest designers selected by him. Over four years, renowned industry names such as Haider Ackermann, Olivier Rousteing, Glenn Martens, Chitose Abe, Julien Dossena, Simone Rocha, and Nicolas di Felice have debuted on the brand’s runway. With 34-year-old Ludovic de Saint Sernin, Gaultier chooses to put the new generation of designers to the test. Despite Le Naufrage, it seems that Saint Sernin has managed to bring the ship safely to port. 

Although some looks were quite distant from Gaultier’s aesthetic—despite the presence of corsets and lacing, some characters were drawn from Saint Sernin’s own archive—the show succeeded in its intent and entertained the audience. Capri pants in lace, laminated black brocade, and silk recalled the collections Gaultier designed for Hermès in the early 2000s, as did the corset blazers and sandal boots featuring front cutouts. In the final looks, the most minimal yet also the most seductive, it was as if de Saint Sernin wanted to use every trick he knew: he combined taffeta draping, more corsets, ostrich feather skirts, and a black and brown lace anchor-shaped top that covered only the nipples and navel. In any case, whether it’s the Ariel look (a heavy tulle dress tied with twelve meters of rope) or the Venus look (a mermaid dress crafted from draped strips of dark cotton), we know that at least a couple of these outfits will be chosen by a celebrity for an upcoming red carpet.