Ludovic de Saint Sernin out does Jean-Paul’s Jean-Paul Gaultier

Being the guest couturier of Jean-Paul Gaultier is rather like being asked to prepare a brilliant thesis on a vastly fashionable subject. This season, it was the turn of Ludovic de Saint Sernin, and the examiners response was to award him resounding honors.

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Playing on much of Jean-Paul’s DNA – corsetry, transgression, portside decadence and a certain French je ne sais quoi, Ludovic whipped up a great collection or racy, sexy, devilish clothes that made Gaultier almost, ahem, seem tame.
 
Fans screamed and whooped throughout the show, staged like every guest collection inside Gaultier’s soaring early 20th-century mansion, built by a philanthropist as an elegant meeting hall for workers.

From an opening look – a sensational mermaid dress-meets-naughty corset, to a leotard-meets-corset worn with centurion’s boots – the show rocked. Ludovic cut one corset with a ship’s steering wheel crochet bra; while another model had a sensational lace galleon hat.
 
One stupendous black beauty looked sensational in a fisherman’s net column with train, a reminder that this house was one of the first to employ multiracial castings. 
 
Sacred met profane in a rippling muscled Icarus with a cobalt blue sarong and fantastic feather wings, courtesy of Maison Février, the master feather makers, who even had plumes in another couture show on Wednesday, Valentino.  While a barely-there lace dress was held up by a thin fabric anchor – the only material on the torso.

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While a duet in crocodile – a female knight-in-exotic-skin armor, followed by a statuesque metal gray reptile column – had people open-mouthed. Both models, like the entire cast, clearly loved wearing these clothes.
 
Even guys got to wear grommet finished corsets, including Ludovic who took a long tour around the catwalk at the finale, embracing Jean-Paul like a grateful novice. De Saint Sernin has been known as a talented,  erratic designers, but today he was totally in the zone.
 
De Saint Sernin entitled this collection “La Naufrage”, or Shipwreck in English , and the cast’s hair looked soaked and laced with seaweed. But this show was, in fact, a triumph.
 
It’s always a delicate balancing act being the guest of Gaultier’s couture atelier, but nobody has driven it which such gusto and skill as Ludovic de Saint Sernin. One hesitates to use absolutes and say which of Jean-Paul’s guest designer was the best. Ludovic’s predecessors include Chitose Abe, Julien Dossena, Nicolas di Felice, Glenn Martens, Olivier Rousteing, Haider Ackermann and Simone Rocha. But one thing is certain, having attended every single show, nobody got a more enthusiastic applause than de Saint Sernin.
 
This was a really great victory for him. Hats off to the man.