Jean Paul Gaultier: Exciting Steampunk Sunglasses


It’s a characteristic of all vintage Gaultier glasses that the designer always oriented himself to everyday and mechanical objects of daily use and incorporated them into the frames as refined details. For example, there are Gaultier glasses whose temples are shaped like a fork. Or adjustable temples which can be adjusted in length by means of an attached belt buckle. Or temple hinges in the form of a very solid nut or a mechanical spring ...
For this reason, the old vintage Gaultier glasses and sunglasses are often called "Steampunk glasses" or "Steampunk sunglasses". A term that hardly anyone really knows how to define, because "steampunk" is actually an art genre or a subculture which can also be described as "retrofuturism". Thus, a view of the future seen in a time gone-by. So, you could say: “Go back to the Victorian age with today's technical knowledge and design a pair of glasses for the future."
But it's not just the mechanical design components that make vintage Gaultier glasses so special. Jean Paul Gaultier's numerous small details from his haute-couture creations have also been incorporated time and again into the prêt-à-porter collections. This means you can find vintage women's sunglasses with eyelashes or Gaultier sunglasses with an implied fringe pony, etc.
With original chic and sophisticated design details, Gaultier also combined outstanding manufacturing quality. Titanium frames and gold-plated glasses were almost standard for Gaultier. That’s why the entire Gaultier collection was produced exclusively by the eyewear manufacturer Murai in Japan.
The JPG vintage glasses collection was not launched on the German market until 1990. One or two vintage Gaultier glasses or sunglasses appeared a little earlier in the USA or Japan. You will find these originals here.
It’s hard to believe that such an eccentric designer as Jean Paul Gaultier has divided his eyewear creations into categories, but the vintage glasses of the Jean Paul Gaultier collection have been marketed in these four pages:
Jean Paul Gaultier 55 series glasses
Jean Paul Gaultier 56 series sunglasses
JPG Junior Gaultier 57 series glasses
Junior Gaultier 58 series sunglasses
In 1990, the Gaultier 55 series corrective frames and the Gaultier 56 series sunglasses first appeared in Europe. The 57 JPG glasses collection together with the Junior Gaultier 58 series sunglasses followed in the middle of the 90s.