An outfit inspired by snakes and a “scandalously” eccentric fashion show will herald the beginning of the Brisbane Festival on Friday.

The festival will be launched with French fashionista Jean Paul Gaultier’s Fashion Freak Show, which will showcase 50 years of pop culture in a spectacle performance.

As part of the fashion show, the haute couture icon and First Nations artist and designer Grace Lillian Lee will unveil a new sculptural couture piece.

It is set to take centre stage in the show featuring 200 of Gaultier’s original pieces.  

Lee, a proud Torres Strait Islander, said the opportunity to collaborate with Jean Paul Gaultier was “just a dream come true”.

When he first saw Lee’s work, Gaultier said it made him feel “very emotional”, and Lee was invited to collaborate with Gaultier in Paris earlier this year. 

“I think to see what Jean Paul Gaultier has done, and to be in his Atelier, in the house of Jean Paul, was just incredible,” she said. 

“It’s made me realise we can do anything, and so I’m really am excited to bring my culture and my art and fashion to the world.”

Celebrating culture

Her work has explored and celebrated her culture, particularly the grasshopper weaving technique. 

She learnt the technique from one of her elders, Uncle Ken Thaiday, a Torres Strait Islander artist renowned for his headdresses and dance masks, inspired by Erub (Darnley Island) culture. 

She recalled that over her career people would often say the grasshopper weave looked like a snake. 

“I always hated it, because I don’t like snakes, because in Queensland, there’s so many,” she said.  

But it was the resemblance that ultimately inspired her to create her piece “Medusa weave”.

“We created this beautiful cage bodice, which is kind of referencing his older work, and then bringing in the woven aspects of what a body sculpture is to me,” she said.

“There’s these snakes that come alive on the body, and then I’ve made this – I think it’s a fabulous headdress – of the Medusa.”

She said her outfit attempted to combine the strength and femininity of Medusa with Ms Lee’s Torres Strait Islander heritage. 

More of Lee’s work will be on display at Brisbane Festival including eight ethereal Shields and Armour outfits. 

Each one is based on Lee’s totem, Koysemer, which is the moth. 

‘A brilliant message’

The Brisbane Festival is the city’s largest cultural event, run in collaboration by the Queensland Government and Brisbane City Council. 

Fashion Freak Show associate director Fanny Coindet said the concept of love inspired the show’s philosophy.

“It’s about love, it’s about self-empowerment, it’s very unique,” Ms Coindet.

“Jean Paul Gaultier says that everyone is beautiful and he truly means it.

“Everyone should embrace their own personality and uniqueness, and that’s such a brilliant message for a designer.”

The Brisbane Festival’s artistic director Louise Bezzina said bringing the production, with 200 pieces of original couture, in a stage production to Brisbane for the first time was “so incredible”. 

“The whole city’s going to come to life as of Friday night,” she said.

“Those that came last year, I can assure you, you’re going to be in for a treat”. 

The Brisbane Festival is supported by ABC Radio Brisbane.