Upcoming Exhibition

The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk
opens March 24, 2012
de Young Museum
Herbst Exhibition Gallery

This March the Fine Arts Museums will present the first major exhibition dedicated to celebrated French designer Jean Paul Gaultier. Dubbed fashion’s enfant terrible, Gaultier launched his first prêt- à-porter collection in 1976 and founded his own couture house in 1997. Emerging as a designer in the 1980s, he developed his own dress codes that reflected the changing world around him.

This dynamic multimedia exhibition will include 130 haute couture and prêt-à-porter designs created between the early 1970s and 2010, as well as such iconic works as the costumes worn by Madonna in her Blond Ambition World Tour in 1990. These join numerous sketches, archival documents, fashion photographs, and video clips that spotlight Gaultier’s collaborations with filmmakers, choreographers, and pop and rock musicians. In a truly unique presentation, Gaultier partnered with Montreal-based theater company Ubu Compagnie de Création in the design of 30 animated mannequins who talk and sing in playful and poetic vignettes.

The openly gay Gaultier uses his designs to tackle gender and transgender issues through androgynous, gender-bending styles, meanwhile delving even further into some of the darker areas of the sexual revolution. Despite the gritty and sometimes controversial context of his collections, the clothes remain beautiful, superbly crafted with the finest dressmaking and detailing skills.

This exhibition is organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in collaboration with Maison Jean Paul Gaultier.