Blah Blah Cafe, the Jean-Michel Jarre forum

[Aqanique]

Hello!

I'm just making a quick post to try and chance my luck on this since Google Lens hasn't been a great help, but does anybody know what pullover or shirt that Jarre is wearing in these photos during some of the Europe in Concert rehearsals? It looks pretty nice and I'd honestly love to get one to wear myself, but I just can't find anything online about it...

Was it tailor-made? An obscure brand that went out of business? Either way, any help is appreciated!



(P.S. Unrelated, but to anybody who saw my post about my Equinoxe 5 demo where I talked about getting my Monaco remaster out by the start of June and was interested in it, sorry for the delay. I've been dealing with some health stuff outside of the forum and haven't had a chance to sort things with my laptop, hoping I'll get it out in the next week or two on my channel and get whatever's making me feel so under the weather sorted out. )

[Richard-Eastham]

Oh, a kindred spirit!

I too am fascinated by JMJ’s fashion, and I went crazy looking for this top back in the 1990s. I too drew a blank and ended up buying a “lookalike” from an indoor market in Sheffield, UK where I was living at the time. I assume it was a street/skate brand but from where and which brand, no idea. Sorry!

Items that I have seen JMJ wear, that I have since bought myself:

- Palm Angels rainbow track top (he wore this on a live stream once and for a photoshoot – see my avatar!)
- Issey Miyake pleated zip-up (various events)
- Issey Miyake pleated blazer (various events)
- Stone Island lightweight metallic jackets, both the green and grey versions (Summer Tours ‘25 and ‘26)
- Stone Island Liquid Reflective jacket (Versailles 400 and Bratislava)
- Pale cream denim jacket (Bratislava sound check, pre-show prep)
- Black cargo pants (with all the above)
- Dark grey denim shirts (the Electronica Tour)

[Aqanique]

Oh, a kindred spirit!

I too am fascinated by JMJ’s fashion...

I've always loved how Jean-Michel dressed when he was younger, he definitely had an eye for fashion as well as being a great musician! I'm surprised that there isn't a topic on the forum purely dedicated to finding different clothing that he's worn over the years.

While his look has definitely evolved over the years, it's interesting to me that he seems to keep up with what's popular on the fashion market. I was very shocked to see him wearing Stone Island jackets back in late 2024 and into the 2025 summer tour, I really thought only people my age were wearing those kind of brands! Part of me loves the way he dresses today and can look cool in almost any outfit that he wears, but another part also wishes he would wear those extravagant suits at his concerts again, even just as a one-off. I'd definitely love to see him rocking a Destination Trocadéro-like outfit if he does any bigger concerts this year.

I think it's very interesting how he seems to end up going back to his roots in a lot of different ways, visually with his concerts and with his fashion too. I think a decent example would be the "Oxygene" quarter zip he wears in the music video and the Celine tracksuit jacket he can be seen wearing in the photo attached to his biography on the official website. Although they aren't identical in design, it's nice that they both keep a kind of brown and white theme to them:



I can maybe try my luck on Reddit to see if anybody knows what brand it is, but with my past experiences on the platform, a lot of users I've tried to interact with aren't as nice or helpful as they are on here... I'll make sure to tell you if I get an answer though!

[Richard-Eastham]

I liked his early outfits, especially his stage outfits in the 70s, 80s and 90s:

- Silver Pierre Cardin shirt (back of the Equinoxe LP and on stage at Place de la Concorde)
- Red Kenzo jacket and patterned waistcoat (Houston and Lyon) – def my favourite outfit of his!
- Yohji Yamamoto coats (green, Docklands; red, La Défense and I think also at Europe In Concert, both red and green were by Yamamoto)
- Stripey shirt and a beret (CPLT, Paris - could there be a more French image than JMJ in a stripey top, and a beret beneath the Eiffel Tower?!)
- Snakeskin suit (Moscow) – no idea who made that, but pretty cool

But then he all went a bit casual for his stage wear. I recall seeing pics of the rehearsals for Gdansk and Forbidden City and being a bit shocked that he wore the exact same stuff on stage, baggy white shirt (Poland) and the leather jacket and hoodie (China). He was making no effort in those days it seemed to me. He carried on with the baggy white shirt look right through to Monaco, and then the Electronica era began.

His early look was a mix of high end fashion houses (Kenzo, Yamamoto) with a sort of theatrical circus look – those long, red frock coats, made him look like a ringmaster in charge of the show. He’s since gone much more street fashion (Stone Island, Celine) and this definitely is a better fit with his current stage set up. But I do miss the theatre and the circus - that image set him apart from the crowd back in the day. He looked and sounded like nobody else.

[Richard-Eastham]

Hello!

I'm just making a quick post to try and chance my luck on this since Google Lens hasn't been a great help, but does anybody know what pullover or shirt that Jarre is wearing in these photos during some of the Europe in Concert rehearsals? It looks pretty nice and I'd honestly love to get one to wear myself, but I just can't find anything online about it...

Was it tailor-made? An obscure brand that went out of business? Either way, any help is appreciated!



(P.S. Unrelated, but to anybody who saw my post about my Equinoxe 5 demo where I talked about getting my Monaco remaster out by the start of June and was interested in it, sorry for the delay. I've been dealing with some health stuff outside of the forum and haven't had a chance to sort things with my laptop, hoping I'll get it out in the next week or two on my channel and get whatever's making me feel so under the weather sorted out. )

I have now run an AI check using Claude on this red/white long sleeved t-shirt from the EIC rehearsals and it is suggesting it might be by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac of the JC/de Castelbajac label. Claude AI says:

The bold red heraldic cross/arrow on white, with the circular target-style emblems on the shoulders and chest, reads very much like the work of Jean-Charles de Castelbajac (the JC/de Castelbajac label). He's the French designer most associated with exactly this vocabulary — primary-colour pop graphics, cross and roundel motifs, near-medieval heraldry rendered in sportswear — and he dressed a lot of musicians in that era. That's a stylistic match, though, not a documented attribution, so treat it as an informed hunch rather than a confirmed answer.

[Aqanique]

Hello!

I'm just making a quick post to try and chance my luck on this since Google Lens hasn't been a great help, but does anybody know what pullover or shirt that Jarre is wearing in these photos during some of the Europe in Concert rehearsals? It looks pretty nice and I'd honestly love to get one to wear myself, but I just can't find anything online about it...

Was it tailor-made? An obscure brand that went out of business? Either way, any help is appreciated!



(P.S. Unrelated, but to anybody who saw my post about my Equinoxe 5 demo where I talked about getting my Monaco remaster out by the start of June and was interested in it, sorry for the delay. I've been dealing with some health stuff outside of the forum and haven't had a chance to sort things with my laptop, hoping I'll get it out in the next week or two on my channel and get whatever's making me feel so under the weather sorted out. )

I have now run an AI check using Claude on this red/white long sleeved t-shirt from the EIC rehearsals and it is suggesting it might be by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac of the JC/de Castelbajac label. Claude AI says:

The bold red heraldic cross/arrow on white, with the circular target-style emblems on the shoulders and chest, reads very much like the work of Jean-Charles de Castelbajac (the JC/de Castelbajac label). He's the French designer most associated with exactly this vocabulary — primary-colour pop graphics, cross and roundel motifs, near-medieval heraldry rendered in sportswear — and he dressed a lot of musicians in that era. That's a stylistic match, though, not a documented attribution, so treat it as an informed hunch rather than a confirmed answer.

I actually got a reply on Reddit that I was about to share with you! It isn't the best, but I'll give you it anyways:

"He wore it in September 1993 at the concert in Manchester you can see it in these video. Being it was in England, could it be a variant of the UK saint George's Cross? Maybe look into UK based skate brands? Logo seems to say DJ."

I'd already mentioned in my Reddit post that he may have purchased it some time around August 1993, since the earliest photos of him that I could find with him wearing it were during the Budapest rehearsals, and threw in your theory that it might have been some kind of streetwear brand.

My biggest worry is that if he DID purchase this thing in Budapest, the brand might be a lot harder to find. I'll chase up your lead first though, it's a pretty solid one and could hopefully help in the search.

Also just out of curiosity, do you still happen to have that lookalike shirt you mentioned buying? How close would you say it was to the real thing?

[Aqanique]

I liked his early outfits, especially his stage outfits in the 70s, 80s and 90s:

- Silver Pierre Cardin shirt (back of the Equinoxe LP and on stage at Place de la Concorde)
- Red Kenzo jacket and patterned waistcoat (Houston and Lyon) – def my favourite outfit of his!
- Yohji Yamamoto coats (green, Docklands; red, La Défense and I think also at Europe In Concert, both red and green were by Yamamoto)
- Stripey shirt and a beret (CPLT, Paris - could there be a more French image than JMJ in a stripey top, and a beret beneath the Eiffel Tower?!)
- Snakeskin suit (Moscow) – no idea who made that, but pretty cool

But then he all went a bit casual for his stage wear. I recall seeing pics of the rehearsals for Gdansk and Forbidden City and being a bit shocked that he wore the exact same stuff on stage, baggy white shirt (Poland) and the leather jacket and hoodie (China). He was making no effort in those days it seemed to me. He carried on with the baggy white shirt look right through to Monaco, and then the Electronica era began.

His early look was a mix of high end fashion houses (Kenzo, Yamamoto) with a sort of theatrical circus look – those long, red frock coats, made him look like a ringmaster in charge of the show. He’s since gone much more street fashion (Stone Island, Celine) and this definitely is a better fit with his current stage set up. But I do miss the theatre and the circus - that image set him apart from the crowd back in the day. He looked and sounded like nobody else.

Jarre's Concorde shirt was silver?! I always thought it was a kind of dark lilac. Maybe it has something to do with the concert lighting, but I always had the impression it had a purple tint.

In my opinion, I think his fashionable look started going downhill during the Oxygene '97 tour. On one hand, I think the look that he had with his regular but slightly messy hair worked quite well during the tour, but that kind of "doctor" look he had going on for some of the other nights was very... interesting to say the least. As for Oxygene in Moscow, I personally didn't really like the look he went for and would've much rather he'd stuck to the 1986-1993 look, but I understand that there were probably a lot of different circumstances considering he was playing for Moscow's 850th anniversary (I assume that's why he wore the beret with the red star on it).



As for the early-ish 2000s concerts like Gdansk and Monaco, I think if I remember correctly that he'd been going through a pretty tough time mentally (since I believe Teo & Tea came out around that time and I don't really want to bash on him too hard), though I'm not 100% sure on it. He might've been putting less effort into how he presented himself because he was so creatively exhausted? I mean I love him and his music with my whole heart, but I have to say that I personally really didn't like the extremely messy and overgrown hair look he had going on in some of the AERO compilation album promo photos, and I didn't think the look suited his usually smart and composed image. Thankfully it improved a lot by the time he was performing in Monaco.



I'm glad that he's found a new look that suits him now though, the dark theming of his outfit for the Electronica tour was definitely one of my favourite modern looks he's had so far. But it's like you say, his older high-end fashion look probably wouldn't suit the setups he uses on his tours in this day, I think he's more focused on practicality now seeing as he's opting for more streetwear in his looks.

[Dr_Jones]

The hairstyle at the Oxygene tour was a dare he had with his daughter afaik. It was, as you said, interesting indeed.

[Aqanique]

The hairstyle at the Oxygene tour was a dare he had with his daughter afaik.

Oh, yeah! I remember reading a comment about it under an interview he'd done before one of the concerts for a news segment. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't he dye it red for some the nights too?

[Dr_Jones]

He dyed his hair red indeed. Very very red. I don't remember if he had that during one of the concerts:
https://vientdemee.blogspot.com/2012/09 ... -1997.html

[Aqanique]

Jeez, you weren't lying about how red it was...



It's quite interesting that he genuinely went through with the dare, when I started doing some deeper research into his concerts a few months after I'd become a fan, I always thought that the bun hair came out of seemingly nowhere compared to the other photos of him I'd seen on the forum.

[Richard-Eastham]

At Place de la Concorde, he had a pretty amazing pair of heels on too! The shirt def looks lilac, purple-ish on the video stills but I think that just a media effect. I'm pretty sure it is silver.



And my error, it's not the same shirt as on the back of the Equinoxe, that's an even more space age silver outfit.



Brilliant that in the background is La Défense. I wonder if he knew then that 12 years' on, he'd perform such an incredible show there?

[Richard-Eastham]

This is a great behind the scenes UK television piece about EIC Manchester. He's wearing that same long sleeve t-shirt, again during rehearsals. See here at 1'20" and 2'50". The days when he had a show outfit and a rehearsals outfit.



Those baggy pants with the zig-zags... I bought a pair like that! Very close to what he's wearing these days on stage, with his Stone Island tops.

As regards my lookalike top, that I bought back in the 1990s, no I no longer have it, and it wasn't even close to the JMJ one. It was just a long sleeve, printed skate t-shirt. It was black and orange. More about the general look, than being exact.

[Xyxophas]

The first time I saw Jarre live was during the Oxygene '97 in Poland. His style back then, with the long coat, slicked-back hair, the glasses, and those laser harp gloves during Oygene 7, made him look like some kind of mad scientist to me.

By the way, does anyone know what model of glasses JMJ is currently wearing? He used to wear the Moscot Zulu, but recently he’s switched to a slightly different model.

[Aqanique]

So I found another upload of the Bad Influence interview that was on YouTube, I think this might be a better photo to identify what's on the logo:



Does it remind anybody of anything? It does look like the "near-medieval" thing that was briefly mentioned in the Claude AI response, but I'm not so sure.