The Brooklyn Museum is the only East Coast venue for The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk, the first international exhibition dedicated to the groundbreaking French couturier. Playful, poetic, and transformative, Gaultier’s superbly crafted and detailed garments are inspired by the beauty and diversity of global cultures.

This multimedia exhibition is organized around seven themes tracing the influences on Gaultier’s development—from the streets of Paris to the cinema—since he emerged as a designer in the 1970s. It features approximately 140 haute couture and prêt-à-porter ensembles, from the designer’s earliest to his most recent collections, many of which are displayed on custom mannequins with interactive faces created by high-definition audiovisual projections. Accessories, sketches, stage costumes, excerpts from films, and documentation of runway shows, concerts, and dance performances, as well as photographs by fashion photographers and contemporary artists who stepped into Gaultier’s world, explore how his avant-garde designs challenge societal, gender, and aesthetic codes in unexpected ways.