A Swan Lake

    When I first watched Aronofsky's multi-awarded "Black Swan" last year, I didn't expect theinfluence that it had a few months later, not in cinema but in fashion, as Jean Paul Gaultier's

haute couture show for A/W 2011-2012 seemed to be inspired of it and of Tchaikovsky's "The Swan Lake" in general.

  Ballet accessories like  chic midi length tutu skirts and tutu skirted dresses and also high heeled pointe shoes and playful elements like the plissé-finish jackets made their appearance along with a lot of feathers -from hair accessories to skirts- implying the film's strong influence. But ballet is not only for women; and Gaultier pointed that out by resuggesting men skirts continuing his idea of fluidity of the sexes. Of course, all these were characterised by Gaultier's unique theatrical mood.
  However, there was something in all this that made me feel like I had traveled back in the '80s watching  one of l'enfant terrible's first individual shows. Maybe it was the reintroduction of some of his '80s innovative elements like the man skirts and the cone bra (which is probably due to his currently three-decade-plus career retrospective running at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts), maybe the wide use of leather, especially when it comes to long coats or it was just the whole "irreverent" atmosphere...

second part: