Jean Paul Gaultier (born April 24, 1952, Arcueil, France) is a French fashion designer known for his eponymous design house and his seven-year tenure as head designer at Hermès.
As a child growing up in a suburb of Paris, Gaultier showed an affinity for fashion. By the time he was 13 years old, he had created a collection of clothing for his mother and grandmother, and by age 18, he had started an apprenticeship in the fashion house of Parisian designer Pierre Cardin.
In 1976 Gaultier presented his first solo collection, using unorthodox, inexpensive materials like braided straw. Gaultier quickly gained attention due to his unconventional designs.
As a child growing up in a suburb of Paris, Gaultier showed an affinity for fashion. By the time he was 13 years old, he had created a collection of clothing for his mother and grandmother, and by age 18, he had started an apprenticeship in the fashion house of Parisian designer Pierre Cardin.
In 1976 Gaultier presented his first solo collection, using unorthodox, inexpensive materials like braided straw. Gaultier quickly gained attention due to his unconventional designs.
Jean Paul Gaultier
Typically components of his collections included broad-shouldered jackets, textured or patterned stockings, trench coats of all sorts, baggy pants, flowing skirts, and the horizontally striped sailor's shirts that became the signature of his style.
His women's collections often incorporated masculine jackets, hats, and leather, and his menswear frequently featured such feminine elements as skirts, corsets, and gossamery fabric.
Gaultier's designs also tended to amplify sexuality, often blurring the boundary between underwear and outerwear. Perhaps the most widely recognized of his hypersexual works are the conical bras that he created for American pop singer Madonna's 1990 Blond Ambition tour. Gaultier teamed with Madonna again in 2006 to design the wardrobe for her Confessions tour.
In 2008 he similarly created costumes for Australian pop singer Kylie Minogue. In early 2012 he developed a collection based on the distinctive style of British pop singer Amy Winehouse.
Aside from his work with pop stars, Gaultier designed costumes for many films, including The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover (1989), The Fifth Element (1997), and Bad Education (2004).
In January 2020, Gaultier announced that his couture show later that month would be his last, though he would continue to design clothing.
