14 of Jean Paul Gaultier’s greatest runway moments<

L'enfant terrible of French fashion recently retired from the runway. After a 50-year career that began at the age of 18 under the tutelage of Pierre Cardin and fledged into an avant-garde, multi-million pound design empire, Jean Paul Gaultier announced that his Haute Couture show in Paris on 22 January 2020 would be his last.

Showing his first individual collection in 1976, Gaultier’s irreverent, often unconventional approach to design has seen him both challenge and irrevocably shape fashion’s landscape. Working both for his own label and for Hermès between 2003 and 2010, he has also provided numerous costumes for stage and screen, ranging from Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element (1997) to, more recently, his very own retrospective revue Fashion Freak Show. It’s a fitting title. If there’s one constant, Gaultier’s always been good at putting on a show.

In that spirit, Vogue takes a look at some of Jean Paul Gaultier’s most memorable catwalk moments: featuring risqué outfits, saintly models, Celtic jigs, expert tailoring, dance pageants and plenty of corseting along the way.

1. Fall/Winter 1984

Captivated by the possibilities of underwear-as-outerwear from his very earliest fashion days, Gaultier has drawn on the shapes of 1950s-era corseting and lingerie across the course of his career — often questioning our understanding of femininity through parody and exaggeration. His FW84 collection saw the development of his now much-renowned conical silhouette via his ‘Bombshell Breasts’ dress in a series of pink and orange crushed velvets. Gaultier later claimed that he was largely inspired by his grandmother’s corsets and waspies, and that the first ever recipient of one of these excessively proportioned creations was actually his childhood bear, Nana. They would later become a widely celebrated look when his designs caught the eye of Madonna, who asked Gaultier to produce similarly silhouetted costumes for her iconic 1990 Blond Ambition tour.

2. Spring/Summer 1985