Highway to Heaven

Jean-Charles is a fashion designer and visionary artist who rewrote the sector’s traditional codes in the 1970’s, when he created a lot of new fashion trends, like the ‘anti-fashion’ movement, based on accumulation, appropriation, and the alternative use of objects, very much like situationism and Dadaism. Between the 70’s and the 90’s, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac was also the artistic director of prestigious fashion houses like Max Mara and Courrèges and he co- founded Iceberg in 1974.

In 1979, in consonance with pop art, he designed cartoon pullovers that have since become iconic. During his career, the French designer befriended and worked with artists such as Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Jean Michel Basquiat, Malcolm McLaren, Robert Mattlepthorpe, M.I.A and Lady Gaga. His creations have been displayed at New York’s Institute of Fashion and Technology, London’s Victoria&Albert Museum and the Galliera Museum in Paris. In 2015, he created a 3700 m2 mural for Orly airport in Paris. Since october 2018, he is the artistic director of United Colors of Benetton’s collections.