Who is Jean Paul Gaultier? Everything you need to know about "the enfant terrible of fashion"

The announcement arrived a few days ago: Jean Paul Gaultier will design a capsule collection with Supreme. After the success of the collaboration with Louis Vuitton, the NY skate brand has chosen another fashion giant, one of the most important contemporary designers. This project gives us the opportunity to test how much we actually know about this eclectic French artist, a man who since the foundation of his eponymous brand in 1976, with a subversive spirit and irony, has always mixed street and couture, turning his shows into happenings where men and women of all ages, ethnicities and body types were shown. JPG gave his interpretation of punk and sailor style, he made men wear skirts and makeup, he played with the codes of men's and women's clothing and made Madonna iconic thanks to his cone bra. In the last few years, Gaultier has been focusing mainly on his couture line, a line where he can let his creativity totally free. 

Here is everything you need to know about Jean Paul Gaultier.

He never attended any fashion school

From an early age, he knew he would become a fashion designer. The first intuition of this came during a punishment, as he has recounted:

"One day the teacher noticed that I was drawing some dancers from the Folies Bergere, all feathers and sequins. She hit me on the fingers with the line and as a punishment she attached the design to my back and forced me to go around the class". 

His classmates loved Jean-Paul's drawings and started to want versions on request. That experience made him understand that he had the ability to talk to people. Then, growing up, his grandmother and mother became his first guinea pigs for whom, inspired by the movie Falbalas, a 1945 French film on a couturier who goes mad with love for his muse, he created garments using things found around the house. Little more than a teenager, he began to draw sketches and sent them to the main Parisian ateliers. On the day of his eighteenth birthday, April 24, 1970, a job offer as an assistant to Pierre Cardin arrived: it is the beginning of his career.

The corset is his symbol item

The fifth element by Luc Besson is one of the many cult films of the 90s, especially for the costumes designed by Gaultier. Who does not remember Leeloo aka Milla Jovovich with her orange bob and the white bandage suit, or, in another outfit, with a white cropped top, low-waisted trousers and orange rubber braces? Among the 1,000 or so looks created by the designer, the leopard-print dress and the black satin dress with a red rose décolleté by Ruby Rhod (Chris Tucker) remain unforgettable, but also the sensual flight attendants with pillow hats on their head and the futuristic waitresses of McDonald's. Looking at the latter's outfit, the source of inspiration for Jeremy Scott for Moschino's FW14 is clear. In the world of cinema, JPG has not only worked on The Fifth Element but has also created the costumes for Kika by Pedro Almodóvar and The Lost City by Jean-Pierre Jeunet.