Each womenswear collection from Jean Paul Gaultier—125 in all—is celebrated through runway photography that reveals the visual drama and creative extremes of his designs
Jean Paul Gaultier (b. 1952) is a renowned French fashion designer known for his avant-garde and boundary-pushing creations—one of his most iconic works is the conical bra that found fame on Madonna’s “Blond Ambition” tour in 1990. Often referred to as fashion’s enfant terrible, he reenergized and reimagined the possibilities of fashion starting in the late 1970s, blurring boundaries between masculine and feminine, and between “high” and “low” culture, and celebrating models of different ethnicities and ages.
This book—the tenth volume in the acclaimed Catwalk series—opens with a concise history of the house and a brief biographical profile of Jean Paul Gaultier before diving into a rich visual exploration of the collections. Each collection is introduced by a short essay citing its influences and highlights and is illustrated with carefully curated catwalk images that showcase the hundreds of spectacular clothes, details, accessories, beauty looks, and set designs—and, of course, the top fashion models and celebrities who walked runways in his clothes, from Linda Evangelista, Madonna, Kate Moss, and Bjork to Gigi and Bella Hadid. Cloth-bound in the Gaultier house’s signature marinière stripes and featuring more than 1,000 photographs, the book is a testament to the creative genius of a fashion legend.