The public will have a rare opportunity to visit one of Paris’s most extraordinary private buildings over the next three days when Jean Paul Gaultier throws open the doors of his illustrious fashion house.
The seven-storey property at 325 Rue Saint Martin – home to the designer’s atélier – is hosting an “immersive” exhibition as part of this year’s Paris Photo salon.
Pictures created by student photographers at the University of Art and Design in Lausanne (ECAL) – interpreting Gaultier’s perfume Scandal in a mix of art and advertising – have been transformed into monumental fabric prints and enormous floor cushions for the event, called Under Your Smell.
The exhibition will also allow a rare glimpse at the elegant belle époque building that is Gaultier’s fashion house headquarters and on which he has stamped his unique style.
No 325 Rue Saint Martin was first known as the Proletariat Palace after it was commissioned in 1912 by a 200,000-member society called the Avenir du Prolétariat (ADP, Future of the Proletariat) and has since been a ribbon factory, boxing hall and a nightclub.
The building, in an unfashionable district of the north Marais, a stone’s throw from the sex workers of Saint Denis, is imposing with its three tall arched windows and decorative ironwork, topped with fierce carved faces aimed at seeing off evil spirits.
Gaultier acquired it in 2004, two years after it served as the headquarters for socialist Lionel Jospin’s disastrous presidential campaign (he was knocked out of the second round by Jean-Marie Le Pen, causing a political storm).
The designer instructed his interior architects to do it out in black, grey and white. Beyond the platinum entrance hall, up the monumental staircase to the first floor with its rococo mouldings, lion’s head and the ADP’s coat of arms he installed a blue neon “Gaultier” sign above old-fashioned cinema-styled red swing doors.
Here, the massive galleried ballroom, with its large skylights and vaulted ceiling, was perfect for his runway shows. The rest of the time, it served as a vast store room.
For most of the year, the building is the exclusive domain of dressmakers and designers. Passersby are often spotted dragging their heels as someone enters or leaves for a glimpse of the grand entrance hall clad from floor to ceiling with striking platinum-coloured metro tiles.
Since Gaultier – perhaps best-known for dressing Madonna in conical bras – officially retired after his 50th anniversary haute couture show in January 2020, the building has been open two days a year to an exclusive audience of fashion world guests for the haute couture and ready-to-wear collections by designers he handpicks to “reinterpret” his ethos and style.
Florence Tétier, the fashion house’s creative director, said they were constantly “rethinking how to use the space”.
“We asked the photography students to think about body perceptions and translate the idea of beauty and the LGBTQIA+ community into photographs using Gaultier’s Scandal perfume. It was a challenge to show that you can still be artistic while incorporating the commercial,” Tétier said.
Maria Eugenia Perez, spokesperson for Gaultier, said opening the fashion house headquarters to the public was about “democratising the space”.
“This building has so much history we wanted to let the public come and see it. This exhibition is for everyone. Until now this has been a very exclusive place and the idea is to reach another audience. It’s about being faithful to the essence of Jean Paul Gaultier and his inspiration so that he is here in spirit even when he is not here.”
• This article was amended on 11 November 2022. No 325 Rue Saint Martin was once a nightclub, but it was not called Le Palace, as a previous version said.
