Kilt Jean Paul Gaultier

Endeavoring to tear down gender stereotypes and sartorial norms on the catwalk, making underwear outerwear, putting men in skirts and models of all shapes and sizes on the runway, Jean Paul Gaultier has created wildly provocative, transformational designs for day dresses, gowns, tops and other garments that draw on numerous influences and boldly merge haute couture with street sensibility.

An only child raised in the suburbs of Paris, Gaultier didn’t have a formal fashion education. But he loved to sketch and was drawn to clothing, citing the corsets in his maternal grandmother’s closet as having a formative impact on his creative direction. He’s said that some of his earliest fashion work was for his teddy bear, and later he would send his sketches to designers he revered, including Pierre Cardin.

Gaultier began his career in 1970 as an assistant to Cardin, who admired the sketches the 18-year-old had sent for his appraisal. After Gaultier had his first runway show in 1976, featuring unconventional statements like pairing motorcycle jackets with ballerina skirts, it didn’t take long for his star to rise.

Gaultier's playful but exquisitely crafted reimaginings of classic Parisian styles — the striped mariner shirt, the trench coat — soon became recurring themes of his eponymous house, which he founded with his life partner and business associate Francis Menuge in 1982.

“He was absolutely peerless for the longest time in the late ’80s and early ’90s,” fashion editor Tim Blanks told the New York Times. This was the period of Gaultier’s most iconic designs.

In 1984, Gaultier’s “Boy Toy” collection challenged men’s fashion with striped shirts and skirts — and sold around 3,000 of them. He was hailed for spectacle-laden runway shows and superb tailoring. Gaultier began to work with Madonna during the late 1980s, and, at the pop star’s request, he designed the costumes for her 1990 “Blond Ambition” tour. Her pink corset became a cultural touchstone of the era.

Gaultier continued to expand his brand. There were the colorful all-over graphic prints in the sheer stretch-tulle fabric of his Soleil line — which have gained fans in millennials seeking the authentic, easy style of 1990s fashion — and he debuted his first couture collection in 1997. Gaultier created costumes for film and stage and was nominated for a César Award for Best Costume Design for The City of Lost Children (1995) and then a second for Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element (1997).

From 2003 to 2010, Gaultier was the creative director for Hermès. The first international exhibition of his work, “The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk,” debuted in 2011 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and toured to cities including Stockholm, New York City, Dallas and London. Vintage Gaultier Birkin bags are unsurprisingly sought-after collectibles, and the So Black collection — a line that included the So Black Birkin, which featured black PVD-coated hardware — was among his last works for the brand before his departure.

Gaultier presented his last ready-to-wear collection in 2014 and in 2020 stepped down from his couture line, ending his boundary-pushing, industry-shaping reign with a raucous show of more than 230 outfits formed from fragments of collections from across his 50-year career.

One of fashion’s enfants terribles, Gaultier has never sought out pretty for pretty’s sake. Instead, he has challenged the traditional ideals of beauty. Today, the designer's vintage clothing designs — experimental undergarments cut from lace and suede, leather-trimmed evening dresses and jackets of denim, plastic or striped jersey — are as punk as they are high fashion.

Find vintage Jean Paul Gaultier dresses, skirts, jeans and accessories today on 1stDibs.

For everyday casual wear, elevating your look at the office or making a dramatic entrance at a formal event, authentic designer and vintage skirts are reliably versatile garments.

Skirts have been around for thousands of years. A woman’s straw skirt found in an Armenian cave is believed to have been handwoven in 3,900 B.C., and long, full skirts were worn by men and women in Ancient Egypt and Ancient Mesopotamia. Over time, the hemlines might have changed significantly but the skirt’s integral role in fashion has remained in place.

By the early 1900s, skirt hemlines had crept up slightly to ankle-length height from the densely layered floor-length style that dominated the Victorian era — a radical shift. As women in the United States began to live more active lives during the 1920s, designers such as Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel sought to free them from the long skirts and other constrictions that persevered in fashion by ​​introducing her first little black dress. That same decade, she debuted her perfume, Chanel No. 5, as well as the Chanel suit with a fitted skirt, inspired by the boxy lines of men’s clothing and employing a sporty tweed.

Advancements in swimwear during the 1920s and 1930s also reflected a climbing hemline. Visionary designers such as Elsa Schiaparelli eventually pushed the boundaries of modesty with her backless suit, but women still wore long garments in public. Also during the so-called Roaring ’20s, short flapper dresses that fell at the knees and boasted a free-flowing sack-like silhouette, as well as chic beaded evening gowns and floral day dresses, paired fabulously with the dazzling jewelry of the era. This proved to be just a fleeting deviation from prevailing social convention, however. Skirts grew longer again in the 1930s, even if bows and other embellishments were added. As women entered the workforce in large numbers, clean lines accentuated curves and flared slightly where the material resolved at the ankles.

After World War II, France earned recognition as the center of fashion design for women. It was the golden age of haute couture, and women, quick to dispense of the drab utilitarian wartime garb that hung in their closets, pined for luxurious, elegant skirts designed by Christian Dior, Chanel, Givenchy and others, which were splashed across the pages of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar in richly colored photographs shot by the likes of Richard Avedon and David Bailey. The 1960s introduced narrow pencil skirts and provocative minis emblazoned with geometrically dazzling patterns or bright floral prints by designers such as Emilio Pucci, Pierre Cardin and Lilly Pulitzer. By the 1970s, women felt emboldened to wear different varieties of this all-purpose garment, exploring wraps, crushed velvet maxis and other styles crafted by Halston, ​​André Courrèges, Yves Saint Laurent and others.

On 1stDibs, find a wide range of designer and vintage skirts for any gender by Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, Alexander McQueen and more. Whether it’s a skirt that can be altered to suit a specific style or an addition that’s ready to join your cherished collection, find exactly what you’re looking for today.