A career-spanning inventory of the iconoclastic designer’s avant-garde creations

Covering more than five decades, this publication gives a dazzling review of the great enfant terrible of French fashion, Jean Paul Gaultier (born 1952). Displaying Gaultier’s oeuvre alphabetically–including iconic pieces such as Madonna’s corsets and Kylie Minogue’s stage costumes–Jean Paul Gaultier: From A to Z examines the designer’s singular aesthetic from all angles while exploring his different influences: from cinema to dance, from Frida Kahlo to sailors. Presenting avant-garde fashion imbued with humanism, Gaultier challenged, reinterpreted and transgressed not only the codes of haute couture and ready-to-wear but also those of our society, creating an inclusive fashion informed by his belief that beauty assumes multitudinous forms. The street, one of the main inspirations for his prophetic vision of a society that celebrates diversity, is for him a realm where integration and multiculturalism, androgyny and metamorphoses, women of power and men-as-objects cross, inspiring the unique creations through the exceptional know-how of the haute couture workshops of his Maison de couture. Whether it is cinema or men wearing skirts, punks or Parisiennes, animals or nature, Gaultier’s sources of inspiration are endless and inexhaustible. Jean Paul Gaultier: From A to Z is a timely tribute to–as well as an essential review of–one of fashion’s true greats.