Thought For The Gay: Jean Paul Gaultier

Jean Paul et ils grand-mère, Marie.

He thinks his grandmother might have steered him towards being gay. “I don’t think you are born gay. But I needed to be loved, like everyone else. And my grandmother, she lost her first child, a girl called Solange, when she was 14. And I saw some letters Solange wrote to my grandmother, and I saw that she finished them with a heart. So then, when I wrote to my grandmother, I put a heart — only because I wanted her to love me more. And maybe I reminded her of Solange. I never wanted to be a girl, but to please her and to have more love, it was the only way. She was very open-minded. When I was about 14, she gave me a book about a gay man and told me, “Read that book, and you will see — they are sick but they are nice people, be good to them.” Of course I don’t agree that gays are sick! But I think she always imagined that I could be very nice with them. At first I flirted with girls, but it didn’t go on. And later, when I was 17, 18 — because I didn’t have my first experience till I was 20 — I was thinking if Dior was gay and if St Laurent is gay, maybe if I work in fashion that means I am gay too?’

Lynn Barber meets Jean Paul Gaultier for the Sunday Times.

The Fashion World Of Jean Paul Gaultier From Sidewalk To Catwalk is at The Barbican from April 9th.

Fagburn interviewed JPG - struck me as the loneliest man I've ever met, felt I couldn't leave.

Fashion: It's London Fatuous Week

A Boy In A Dress Isn't Evil, But Size Zero Models Are
'Does Andrej Pejic modelling women's clothes truly symbolise "the ultimate rejection of the female body" by "evil" gay fashion designers?
'The image I keep seeing is of Pejic in a Jean Paul Gaultier wedding gown. The same "Crazee" JPG who'd send a unicorn down the runway if he could, who designed Madonna's ultra-femme coned bra, whose perfume bottle is woman-shaped. Is this a gay man who hates women?
'What's so shocking about a boy in a dress anyway? Marilyn did the same in the 1980s and no one had a rad-fem fit. For the true face of catwalk evil, look instead to the girl models, some so emaciated they made Samantha Cameron blench in shock.
'As for the accepted "fact" that "fashion is full of gay men who hate women"… this isn't a fact – it's snide, homophobic hogwash, offensive to the hordes of committed gay professionals in the fashion industry. If fashion has a problem (and, by Zoolander, it does), it's not covert hatred of the female, rather, it's overt worship of youth and the BMI that comes with youth. All this, and worse, could be said of fashion, but let's keep the gay-bashing out of it."

Fagburn's most favourite newspaper columnist, Barbara Ellen, tells it like it TIS in The Observer, as per.
Yay!
As your faithful servant Fagburn has reported, this hackneyed old anti-gay tripe/trope - fashion is dominated by gay men and gay men hate women yada yada yada - was disinterred this week by the dreadful Glenda Slagg Amanda Platell in The Daily Mail ('Fashion's Ultimate Insult to Women'), and by the equally hopeless Richard & Judy (!) in The Daily Express ('Boys Will Be Girls').
Funny - all the gay men Fagburn knows love women; from their best friends to their heroes to their mums.
Which side are you on?