2025
This text was written in October 1990, and several months later it appeared in OKO magazine. It was my very first article ever written and published. Very soon after, the war in the former Yugoslavia will start, and OKO magazine will cease to exist.
In 2024, I came across this article, and after reading it, I got the idea of assembling this archive and putting it online.
If we consider fashion curation as an awareness of the relation between an object and the space, then, in a totally intuitive and premature way, I was delineating my interest in fashion curation.
Many years later, while reading an article by Jose Teunissen, I learned that boutiques and shop window displays can be seen as a precursor to the fashion curation and display methods we study today, particularly in the context of fashion exhibitions in museums or galleries.
I came up with the idea to write this article during a summer spent in Paris.
I was 19 and enrolled in a French language course. Yet, most of that hot and suffocating August I spent alone, wandering through the streets, window-shopping, spending countless hours in museums and churches, and of course, going on a sort of pilgrimage to the shops of Chanel, Dior, Hermès.
Yet, only three boutiques impressed me really: Jean-Paul Gaultier’s, Thierry Mugler’s, and Comme des Garçons’s.
What I recognised was that there was a relation between the style of the interior of the boutique and the style of the designer’s collections. Same stylistic language, just expressed through different media.
I had a fake press card, designed by a friend and my mother's colleague, Dragan Stojanovski. It was made from the Student Cultural Centre logo on the envelope, and for me, it represented free access to museums.
To write this article, I would introduce myself as a journalist interested in interiors, and the shop staff would be really very helpful, providing information on who did the architecture and design, or connecting me with PR offices of the brands.
I was doing my research!
I even secured an appointment at the Gaultier press office! Dreaming of meeting him and breaking into the fashion world through the big doors, I dressed my best and arrived early.
An hour of strolling on the street, anxiously waiting, only to find myself on the doorstep of a rather shabby office where I was handed a folder with some press releases... That was it!
Still, this article opened up my early collaborations with other art and fashion magazines, TV programs and ultimately, led me where I stand today.
1990
FASHION SHOP DESIGN: JEAN-PAUL GAULTIER, THIERRY MUGLER, COMME DES GARÇONS
In every kind of industry, particularly in the fashion industry, there is a strong trend towards enhancing the presentation and placement of products. This trend is evident in the use of advertising techniques, as well as in the interior design of the space where sales take place.
For the shops, the most common aim is to foster a pleasant environment, but sometimes this intention goes further. The boutique, despite its basic commercial purpose, can be transformed into a place like a museum, a church, or a nightclub... in other words, a space with a special atmosphere.
Entering, browsing through the exhibited goods, and shopping become a ritual, and those inside are people who share a common trait or mark.
It should be underlined that I am talking about boutiques of well-known fashion designers such as Jean-Paul Gaultier, Thierry Mugler, Comme des Garçons... and this choice is extremely subjective.
The aesthetics of the interior correspond to the aesthetics of the clothing items.
This creates a unique image—a coherent, total look.
Each of these designers has created their own distinctive style, which is reaffirmed with each new collection. Every new collection undergoes a process of launch, advertising, and promotion. Clothing then serves a specific purpose—it communicates glamour, harmony, message... The latest collection is presented on the runway, garments worn by models, carefully chosen for their beauty and figure. Yet, models are destined to fade from that clothing like beautiful but fleeting images, replaced by the reality of the customer.
The collection in the shop takes on a much more trivial character; it is simply a set of clothing items. However, it still has its own language, just as the interior of the boutique has its own language, which elegantly persuades the customer to take that decisive step.
If you find yourself in Paris, and at 6 Rue Vivienne, you will have the opportunity to experience this, because you will be in the Jean-Paul Gaultier boutique, a place that opened in 1983 and which literally revived the entire neighbourhood.
J.P. Gaultier and Marcel Mara, a Parisian architect, designed the space. Their solution is straightforward and unpretentious: the floor is inspired by Pompeian mosaics, instead of classic shelves, there are nail racks and wheels like those in factories, and the mannequins, dressed in the season’s collection, are reminiscent of figures covered in magma.
The whole space is very cool, in the spirit of postmodernism.
At this moment, the Autumn/Winter collection 90/91 is on display, confirming Gaultier as a master of mixing styles. This time, he crossed Central European folk motifs with glitter, glamour, fur... Somewhere between an archaic, nostalgic, village atmosphere and a disco club or a fancy cocktail party. Warm autumn tones - brown, beige, green, burgundy are broken with gold and silver glitter. Gaultier’s woman is dressed in contrast, in the incongruous combination of elements.
However, it is precisely this, which we find incongruous, that creates a perfectly harmonious image. Incongruous in a given moment, the moment of Gaultier's creation, becomes inseparable.
Alongside J.P. Gaultier, who has existed for a decade as a unique phenomenon on the Paris fashion scene, I would single out Thierry Mugler, a designer who is gaining popularity and recognition, and who was proclaimed the author of the best fashion show this season.
His vision of the future can be seen both through his designs and through the design of his boutique, which opened four years ago on Avenue Montaigne in Paris. The interior design is by Thierry Mugler himself, and as a visitor, you wonder whether you have entered a boutique or a spaceship. The predominant colours are silver and white, toned down by soft neon lights in blue, purple and pink. The shapes are aerodynamic...
The machines are turned on, the countdown has begun, we are ready to embark on the autumn-winter 90-91 collection, which will transform a woman into a Vamp of 2000.
The style created by Thierry Mugler represents a reflection of the time, a moment in which we find ourselves: on the brink between two centuries, where today is still very present, but all eyes, trends and movements are focused on tomorrow.
This contrast between two parallel temporalities, one that we live in and the other that we expect, forms an entirely new image for the woman.
Mugler’s woman is dressed in the vision of the future.
Her body is clad in high-tech materials: shiny, cold, futuristic. Neon colours. The shape, silhouette, and contours of her body are visible through vinyl, plastic, leather, silver, metal, and stretch fabric... Yes, she is a Vamp—sexy, wild, aggressive, inaccessible... The echo of the present and the vision of the future merge into an absolute fashion statement.
It is up to us to follow!
Rei Kawakubo, a Japanese designer working under the Comme des Garçons label, is also a fascinating figure on the current Parisian fashion scene.
It is also interesting to visit her boutique, which was opened in 1982 at 42 Etienne Marcel Street. It was renovated in September of this year, and her own signature was left through the collaboration with the Japanese architect, Takao Kawasaki.
They made the space almost abstract, in its timeless whiteness and coolness. The new-age atmosphere comes to full expression.
Such a space fully corresponds to the architectural fashion designed by Rei Kawakubo. Nonchalant asymmetry, the unexpected cuts and hems characterise her style... Both the spectrum and the intensity of the colours of her new collection are fascinating, as well as her use of synthetic fabrics, referencing the '60s, mixed with some completely new materials with very particular textures.
A fashion sold under the Comme des Garçons brand represents a fusion of art forms and unusual tailoring. And it is a really successful match.
Just as the fusion of interior design and fashion design is described in these, but probably in many other cases, too, under other names and in other places.
We just have to discover and fully sense them!
Published in OKO Magazine, Sarajevo
Comme des Garçons
Jean-Paul Gaultier
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