Jean Paul Gaultier reveals that the next guest couturier will be Nicolas Di Felice

Jean Paul Gaultier has chosen Nicolas Di Felice, creative director of Courrèges, as the next guest couturier at the Parisian haute couture house.

The collection will be presented during the upcoming Paris haute couture season, the house confirmed on Monday.

Di Felice is the seventh designer invited to create a collection for Gaultier, a unique collaboration where a new designer is chosen each season.

“Really excited and honored,” Di Felice wrote on his Instagram account followed by the heart emoji and @jeanpaulgaultier. While one photo showed Di Felice wearing a white t-shirt that said Jean Paul Gaultier Haute Couture by Nicolas Di Felice.

The news sparked an immediate outpouring of excitement and congratulations from fellow designers such as Daniel Roseberry, Lutz Huelle, Guillaume Henry, Camille Miceli and Mark Howard Thomas.

The 40-year-old Belgian designer has garnered intense critical praise, especially from French editors and critics, for his recent collections for Courrèges, a house controlled by the Kering Group that he has brilliantly revived.

This unique series on collaborative couture collections, which debuted in July 2021, began with Chitose Abe of Sacai, who has since been followed by Glenn Martens, Olivier Rousteing, Haider Ackermann and, most recently, Simone Rocha.

As noted, the upcoming Paris couture season has been brought forward a week to avoid entanglements with preparations for this summer's Paris Olympics. As a result, the four-day couture week will run from Monday, June 24 to Thursday, June 27. In recent seasons, Gaultier's guest show has been held on Wednesday after lunch, which would mean that Di Felice will present the collection on June 26. All shows of the invited couturiers will take place at Gaultier's historic headquarters, on rue Saint Martin.

Born in Charleroi, in the south of Belgium, Nicolas Di Felice began his career in 2008 at Balenciaga, during Nicolas Ghesquière's tenure there, staying for six years. He subsequently worked for Raf Simons, before rejoining Ghesquière at Louis Vuitton for five more years.

In 2020, he was appointed creative director of Courrèges and presented his first collections, which were widely received, virtually online, the first at a suburban train station. Before beginning a series of fashion collections, staged in conceptual environments, like his most recent show, where the entire stage beat like a giant heart.