The return of Haider Ackermann

In Jean Paul Gaultier’s grand maison de couture, the designer Haider Ackermann is sitting on an overstuffed black velvet chaise-longue, flanked with rails of Gaultier couture clothes, past and present. We are here to talk about his latest project as guest couturier for the maison, a project Gaultier began in 2021 to feverish press interest. Ackermann’s show was lauded for capturing the essence of Gaultier and for creating some of the most spectacular and desirable clothes of the spring/summer haute couture season. To prove that point, the ateliers are buzzing, working on orders.

The guest couturier idea is simple but inspired: rather than appoint a single creative director following Jean Paul Gaultier’s own retirement, aged 67, in 2020, the house instead decided to invite a selection of designers to each create, for one season only, haute couture collections under the Gaultier name. It is a departure for couture but akin to the limited-edition “drops” of streetwear labels, with an ever transforming aesthetic. This radical idea is helping to revive interest – yet again – in the anachronistic art form of handcrafted, hand-fitted clothing, as well as in the Gaultier label.

The roster is based on a list of talent drawn up by Jean Paul Gaultier himself – to date, it has included Japanese designer Chitose Abe of Sacai, Belgian Glenn Martens and Frenchman Olivier Rousteing. One day last summer, the company phoned Ackermann. “It was really like a present,” Ackermann says, of the approach. “I really did it with lots of honour. Also, you know, they could approach all the young kids. I’ve been here for quite a while – I started [my eponymous label] in 2004, for God’s sake!” He laughs. Ackermann is 52; his career in fashion began in the 1990s, working for others before founding his eponymous brand. “So, to be, after all those years, requested for this one shot, you take it with even more candour.”

Ackermann is matinee-idol handsome and impressively dressed: a studded bomber over a worn indigo denim work-jacket and a violet ascot knotted at the neck demonstrate his colour sense. That’s one of the shared traits between Gaultier and Ackermann, though the former is pigeonholed as playful and the latter rigorous and austere. Both blur genders in their work, often slip-sliding between sensuous fabrics, hugging close to the body, and strict tailoring. They both adore haute couture – “I’ve always been flirting with haute couture, wanting to taste it,” Ackermann says – in terms of modern technique, and also its histories. There are references to past maestros such as Alix Grès and Yves Saint Laurent in both their back catalogues. And imaginative travel through the dress of different countries and cultures is a constant in the work of both designers – Gaultier created collections inspired by Spain, Scotland and New York’s Harlem, as well as Arctic and Hasidic Jewish dress. Ackermann has referenced kimonos, Indian saris and the wrapped and hooded figures of nomadic tribes.

Gaultier is quintessentially Parisian. By contrast, Ackermann, in his early life, travelled a lot: he is Colombian, adopted by French parents – his father was a cartographer and the family peregrinated through northern Africa when he was a child. “I lived in Ethiopia, Chad, Algeria – and women were wrapped in fabric, hidden behind it. So you always had this kind of mysterious woman, which was never revealed. This mysteriousness intrigued me.” Rather than clothes, it is those formative memories of women’s figures in colourful textiles that Ackermann recalls, in both conversation and through his own clothing design.

An unexpected love of sportswear also features across the work of both designers: Gaultier created some of the earliest mash-ups of high-fashion and sport in the late 1980s, while last year, Ackermann unveiled a collaboration with Fila.

Ackermann presented his Gaultier collection in January. Rather than reference specific past collections or moments, as previous designers had, these clothes latched on to a sensibility of Gaultier, to the emotional resonance of his past – a graphic black kimono was a reminder of his fascination with Asian dress; swirling satin-encased boning recalled, in abstraction, Madonna’s Blonde Ambition corset; while a purple crepe dress, its bodice bubbling into a circular cut, seemed a throwback to the early days of Gaultier’s career, and his training with Sixties couture mastermind Pierre Cardin.

“We know all this spectacular side of Jean Paul, we know all the fantastic, the music, the funkiness,” says Ackermann. “But sometimes when you do that, you forget the core, which is the perfect architecture of tailoring. So my idea was, ‘I want to purify’, and go back to what people might not see at first, because you’re so taken away by the spectacle.”

Gaultier himself watched the show, seated alongside Catherine Deneuve. “I was slightly worried that people would not understand that it is Gaultier,” Ackermann says. “But I received quite a few compliments and one of the most [complimentary] was from him [Gaultier] saying, ‘I could find myself in every piece.’” He pauses – and smiles. “So I was like, ‘OK, I succeeded.’”

Indeed, as the French say, it was a succès fou: Dazed co‑founder Jefferson Hack described it to me as “extravagant minimalism”; the couture client and artist Daphne Guinness said Ackermann was a true talent and has ordered items for her own wardrobe, to sit alongside her Gaultier originals. This show could also help transform perceptions of Jean Paul Gaultier – often seen as the prankster of modern fashion, and coloured in the UK, still, by his stint as co-host of raunchy 1990s television show Eurotrash. Some believe that it is one reason Gaultier was overlooked by Bernard Arnault in the search to hire a creative director for Christian Dior, in 1996 – rankled, Gaultier launched his own haute couture operation.

Ackermann’s homage eschewed Gaultier’s magpie cultural roaming, his punkish nose-thumbing at fashion’s orthodoxies, his taste for the strange and outré and his love of sexual subversion. Instead, it highlighted the always praised precision of Gaultier’s cut, his mastery of line, his colour sense as well as the excellence of his ateliers, filled with craftspeople acknowledged as some of the industry’s finest.

The atelier is a major pull for any designer doing a “season” chez Gaultier, alongside the opportunity to delve into one of fashion’s most awe-inspiring and influential archives. Plus, there’s none of the baggage of conventional creative directorship roles – designers are unfettered by concerns over sales or profitability, given that couture is sometimes a loss-leading marketing exercise. That said, Ackermann tells me clients have ordered every piece from his show.

The marketing aspect also works: Gaultier’s revolving roster of designers has brought attention back to the label, which is owned by fragrance conglomerate Puig.

But this show wasn’t just about revitalising interest in Gaultier, it was also a return to fashion for Ackermann himself. Aside from the recent Fila collaboration, he had been absent since his autumn/winter 2020 show, pre-pandemic. Ackermann’s own label – currently on hiatus – has been celebrated for its romance, sensuality of silhouettes and materials, and arresting colour combinations. From early on, it garnered a loyal following – his appeal has always been cultish, his turnover small, but his creative impact is significant. He also headed LVMH-owned Berluti for three seasons, to critical success.

Ackermann cautiously explains his absence, alluding to a falling out with his former business partner of almost 20 years, Anne Chapelle (who had also worked with Belgian designer Ann Demeulemeester). Reluctant to go into detail, he has discussed the issue at length in an interview in industry magazine, System. The article stated that Chapelle had “said in a newspaper interview that the business had suffered a ‘mega-loss’,” and that Ackermann was effectively sacked during the pandemic.

Ackermann told System that Chapelle only had his name in licences and he informs me that the issues in their dispute are now resolved. “I don’t want to say much because it’s not interesting and I don’t think it’s good to throw garbage out there,” he says.

In the interim, Ackermann had still been creating: most noticeably, he dressed his friends, the actors Tilda Swinton and Timothée Chalamet – “The two T’s” as Ackermann calls them – for various red carpet appearances, keeping his name in circulation. He says that the colour of their outfits has significance to the movies they are premiering – Chalamet wore blood-red Ackermann for the launch of Luca Guadagnino’s cannibal love-parable Bones and All at the Venice Film Festival last year.

“It’s a dialogue,” Ackermann says. “It’s just the two of us in the room and it’s a playground. We are play companions in those moments. And that feels great.” 

​Model shoot photographed for the FT by Matthieu Delbreuve; model, Lara Mullen at Oui Management; stylist, Maylis Bonjour; groomer, Tatsu Yamanaka at MFT Agency; photographer’s assistant, Arthur Jung; make-up, Emilie Plume at Carol Hayes Management; hair, Charlotte Dubreuil at MFT Agency​

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