Since Jean-Paul Gaultier bowed out in 2020, a leading designer has taken up the scissors of the French House for a Haute Couture collection. And for the next season, it is none other than Julien Dossena, fashion prodigy at the head of Paco Rabanne for 10 years, who will cut silhouettes inspired by Rabanne, mixed with Gaultier genes.
Chitose Abe, Glenn Martens, Olivier Rousteing, Haider Ackermann and now Julien Dossena. In 2020, the enfant terrible of fashion announced his withdrawal from the Fashion world. Sad, disappointing, too fast … But this date does not mark, fortunately, the total stop of the House Gaultier. Indeed, the founder decided to let each season a designer draw, with his own vision, a couture collection, which marks each time the spirits. Because it must be said that this concept is unique !
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Julien Dossena, between couture and innovation
Haider Ackermann, Timothée Chalamet’s and Hollywood stars’ favorite stylist, is passing the torch, or rather the needles, to Julien Dossena. A true jack-of-all-trades, he made his mark in the House of the other enfant terrible of fashion across the Channel, Alexander Mcqueen.
After Chloé and Mcqueen, he spent four years at Balenciaga, where he crystallized his taste for couture. In 2012, he launched his own House, Atto. It must be said that the young French designer was cut out for this profession. After studying at the famous Cambre school, he was awarded the special jury prize at the Hyères International Fashion, Photography and Accessories Festival. Eight years later, he won the first LVMH prize.
And it was in 2013 that his career took off, when he became head of the Paco Rabanne house. Famous but forgotten by the fashion sphere, he was able to give back to Paco what was Paco’s. With a keen and youthful eye, he turned it into one of the world’s hottest new brands, resurrecting everything from the metal mesh dress to the 1969 bag.
And it’s thanks to his talents as a couturier, or even a metallurgist, like the late Paco Rabanne, that Julien Dossena will create the next JPG Couture collection. We have no doubt of his overflowing imagination and his talent… But it will be difficult to compete with those who preceded him. Like Olivier Rousteing who, two seasons ago, took over all the codes of the House of Gaultier, transforming a perfume bottle into a dress, the Eiffel Tower into a double-breasted bodice and the sailor suit into a real object and garment of desire…
The Gaultier legacy
Are you also looking forward to discovering the next collection signed by Julien Dossena? You will have to wait a few more months, until next July. In the meantime, the designer has confided in the pages of some media including Le Monde. For him, his work is a kind of “reinterpretation“. He uses the metaphor of music and the conductor. It is like “giving another tempo to existing pieces“. An exercise he knows particularly well since his last show for Paco Rabanne was a tribute to the eponymous designer of the House. The metallic mesh, visual identity of the Franco-Spanish designer, was the main element.
For this future couture collection, Julien Dossena has his own vision. We must not distort the essence of the project, only bring a new vision, while keeping the constructions. In other words, to stay in the Gaultier universe while adding a Rabanne/Dossena paste. Used to designing clothes and accessories for a general public, Julien Dossena faces a new exercise with these couture clothes, reaching a different clientele.
We just have to wait wisely before this new Gaultier edition. In the meantime, you can see, or review the latest spectacular and generous collections of Julien Dossena’s predecessors.
Read also >Paco Rabanne: the metallurgist of fashion is dead
