The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier opens in Montreal

Madonna’s cone-bra corset, unseen backstage photographs and a leopard-skin dress that took over 1,060 hours to create have gone on show as part of a new retrospective of Jean Paul Gaultier’s work in Montreal.

The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts unites 130 pieces from the designer’s collections dating to 1976.

The exhibition, which opened on Friday, nearly didn’t come together due to its subject’s hesitation.

[A] retrospective usually follows your funeral and I’m still alive, but Nathalie Bondil [director and chief curator] convinced me,’ Gaultier told WWD during a Q&A at the launch event last week. The purpose is to show what I want to say through clothes. It is to make clothes that you will love and wear. It’s a good way to show my themes.’

But did Gaultier ever expect to see his designs in an art museum?

I don’t think my work is art,’ Gaultier said. We are in the service of men and women.’

As previously reported here on MadonnaTribe.com, Madonna’s corsets have been first sent to Paris where they were meticulously restored at the Jean Paul Gaultier atelier and after that, they were sent to Montreal where they are on display until the beginning of October. The exhibition will then travel to Dallas, San Francisco, Madrid and Rotterdam.

From an article by Elle UK.

Have a look at one of the superb Madonna-related pages in the exhibition catalogue – written by Suzy Menkes, Nathalie Bondil and Florence Muller with a foreword of Jean Paul Gaultier himself – in this picture snapped and shared by our Community member Octobre26.