Item 2019.103 - Junior Gaultier Leopard Print Jeans

Invisible Men exhibition label:

LEOPARD PRINT JACKET, T-SHIRT AND JEANS
Junior Gaultier
1989

Junior Gaultier was one of the first and most successful designer diffusion collections of the 1980s making the work of Jean-Paul Gaultier accessible to a much wider global audience. This denim jacket features a leopard print design derived from the natural world camouflage pattern which enables big cat predators to merge with their habitat.

Cotton
Archive no. 2016.281 and 2017.051 and 2019.103

From Inside the Westminster Menswear Archive:

LEOPARD PRINT TROUSERS
Junior Gaultier
Spring Summer 1989
‘Western Baroque’, Jean Paul Gaultier’s Spring Summer 1989 menswear show, also featured the Junior Gaultier collection, which consisted of an array of leopard print garments for men, including blazers, jeans, denim jackets, T-shirts, cowboy hats and elbow-length gloves. While fur has historically been a symbol of wealth, class and social status, advances in pile fabrics and imitation and synthetic furs during the twentieth century made it more accessible and more strongly linked to women’s fashion. Leopard was an expensive fur, but its distinctive pattern could be applied to different fabrics and was especially popular from the 1940s onwards. The later adoption of leopard print for menswear by designers such as Jean Paul Gaultier, Vivienne Westwood and Celine subverted these gendered associations.
Cotton
Archive no. 2017.051