Fragrance house

Jean Paul Gaultier

Jean Paul Gaultier established his fashion house in Paris in 1976, beginning with women’s prêt-à-porter. Its creative identity developed through a mix of French style and rebellion, contrasting genres, cultures and materials while challenging conventional ideas of gender and beauty. The house introduced its first men’s prêt-à-porter collection in 1983; its 1985 And God Created Man collection introduced the men’s skirt. In January 1997, it presented its first haute couture collection. Gaultier’s designs for Madonna’s 1990 Blond Ambition World Tour included the cone-bra costume that became a defining image associated with his work. After withdrawing from the ready-to-wear calendar in 2014, Gaultier presented his final runway collection in January 2020. From 2021, the house invited different designers to reinterpret its archives each season, before appointing Duran Lantink permanent creative director in April 2025, with responsibility for ready-to-wear and haute couture and a return to the ready-to-wear calendar. Classique, the house’s first fragrance, launched in 1993 with a corseted female-torso bottle and tin packaging that translated Gaultier’s corset vocabulary into fragrance; it became an instant bestseller. Le Male followed in 1995 as the house’s first men’s fragrance and became the best-selling men’s fragrance in Europe.