The Best Show in Paris

PARIS — Going to a week of fashion shows can be like overdosing on any art form: going to art gallery after art gallery, Off Broadway play after Off Broadway play; reading thriller after thriller. A lot of what you ingest is derivative, some of it is staid, some just plain silly. But every once in awhile you experience something that, in its clarity and power, knocks you flat. That’s the high; the thing that keeps people coming back time and again.

And on Wednesday, when Haider Ackermann unveiled his collection for Jean Paul Gaultier couture, it happened in Paris.

Gaultier, as people may or may not remember, was the enfant terrible of fashion, the inventor of Madonna’s cone bra and the popularizer of men in skirts, and he retired in 2020. Since then, his brand has handed its couture to a series of designers, each producing one collection. They have been a motley, counterintuitive crew: Chitose Abe of Sacai was the first, then Glenn Martens of Diesel and Y/Project, Olivier Rousteing of Balmain, and now Mr. Ackermann, the Colombian-born Antwerp-trained designer whose own brand was famous for the high romance and rigor of its tailoring, but which has been off the runway for while.

Mr. Ackermann lost control of his name and his company a few years ago (he just got it back) and his most recent design stints have been a collaboration with Fila and the red carpet one-offs he makes for Timothée Chalamet, like that red halter top, and Tilda Swinton. He wasn’t an obvious choice for Gaultier. But he was a brilliant one.

On a runway bathed in icy blue, to the soundtrack of a thrumming heart, came tailcoats sliced with the precision of an etching over shirts abstracted into tabs of rough-cut white chiffon and cigarette-slim pants. A mid-calf sleeveless black sheath was cut to lap the floor at the back, the train lined with lavender and chartreuse, and its shoulders swaddled by a single strand of rhinestones tied by a silver filament just tracing the spine. There was a fire opal taffeta jumpsuit with a giant bow at one hip; a white swing coat with emerald leather opera gloves; an ovoid amethyst gown tapering down at the wrists and thighs.