30 fashion designers you should know... #24

JEAN PAUL GAULTIER

He uses underwear as outerwear, puts men in women's clothes, brings fetish clothing and camp clichés to the catwalk and shatters as many taboos as no other designer. He's the one responsible for Madonna's famous corset with conical cups. He is the couturier dusting off haute couture with radical ideas. He's the one who brings the young audience to fashion shows. Jean Paul Gaultier soon insurged people's attitude towards life and abandoned his education at eighteen without graduating. He went straight to the studio of the designer Pierre Cardin, to whom he had sent illustrations and so impressed that he was offered a job. For six years Gaultier tried to get a foothold in various couture houses, but finally ended up with twenty-four and his own label. His big coup, 1983: the corset dress. Gaultier integrated undergarments into evening fashion. 1985: the man's skirt. Gaultier designed such controversials that models refused their job. And that was when provocation had acquired a new name: Jean Paul Gaultier. He became the rock star among designers. Gaultier mixed East and West, classic and punk, masculine and feminine. But despite all the broken rules (Gaultier is also known as "enfant terrible"), he never neglected his fashion's quality.