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Fashion Review
Gaultier’s Great Goodbye
After 50 years, the designer held his last show, and it was a doozy.
![](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/01/26/fashion/23gaultier-jpg2/23gaultier-jpg2-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp&disable=upscale)
PARIS — Jean Paul Gaultier, the French designer who put Madonna in a bullet-bra and men in skirts, scandalized the couture establishment by hosting the TV show “Eurotrash” and never forgot his sense of humor, yet could cut a tuxedo with such panache he was regarded as an heir to Yves Saint Laurent, said goodbye to the runway after 50 years on Wednesday night .
He did it in the gilded 19th-century Théâtre du Châtelet, where the Ballets Russes once danced, in front of a packed 2,500-seat audience that included the former supermodel and the former French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, and the designers Nicolas Ghesquière (who began his career as a junior assistant to Mr. Gaultier), Christian Lacroix and Dries Van Noten, who had made the trip in from Antwerp, Belgium, just for the evening.
And he did it with a greatest hits spectacular starring friends and family, from the actors Béatrice Dalle and Rossy De Palma to the models Yasmin Le Bon and Paris Jackson, plus the burlesque star Dita Von Teese. Plus Boy George, who opened the whole thing with his own version of Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black,” and closed it with “Church of the Poison Mind.”
Mr. Gaultier, 67, stepped back from the ready-to-wear runway in 2014, but this was his final farewell — at least to shows. It seems he will continue to have some role in his company, which is owned by the Spanish group Puig, and he’s already dabbling in a sideline as a cabaret director. He announced his departure from the catwalk only five days ago, via Instagram.
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