would reinvent himself as a pop-art personality Andy Warhol’s defining look would include an identical blue and white-striped T-shirt. Later, the young illustrator Andrew Warhola Jr. Genet’s contemporary Pablo Picasso was also known for his louche Breton-striped style. “If Genet’s friend and supporter Jean Cocteau and his milieu were originally responsible for the introduction of “sailor style” – the striped Breton T-shirt and red pompom hat – it is Genet and his character Querelle of Best, played by Brad Davis in Fassbinder’s 1982 film, with a poster designed by Warhol, who made it iconic.” – AnOther Magazine, issue 19. This coincided with an exploration into homoeroticism in Warhol’s work, which spurned the infamously lascivious Sex Parts series. Andy Warhol’s poster tribute to the film depicts the central character Querelle in a sensual embrace. This in turn set the tone for the aesthetic of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final film – an adaptation of Querelle, which was released posthumously after Fassbinder’s death from a drug overdose in 1982.
Jean Cocteau’s venereal illustrations for Querelle de Brest were published in 1947. Picasso lauded Genet's art writing, calling his essay on Giacometti the greatest essay on an artist Cocteau visualised Querelle and immortalised it in film and all three men, among others, signed a petition to successfully prompt a presidential pardon for an imprisoned Genet in 1948. His writing earned him an impressive league of fans Pablo Picasso, Jean-Paul Sartre and Jean Cocteau were enthusiasts. Emblematic of Genet’s erotically-charged vision is the Breton-striped sailor from his novel Querelle de Brest.īorn in 1910 to a prostitute, adopted by a carpenter, raised in the provinces, then leaving to drift around Europe working as a beggar and prostitute, Genet created work – novels, plays and artist essays – that explored themes of homosexuality and criminality, fuelling fascination about his own unconventional backstory. French avant-garde writer Jean Genet's inversion of the moral and literary zeitgeist gave way to an enduring romanticism with French vagrancy and a tawdry underworld that continues to inspire artists, musicians and fashion designers to this day. Sometimes, the fashion legacy of a famous figure owes itself not to the way they dressed but the sartorial influence of their life’s work.
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