Jean Paul Gaultier’s Retrospective Returns to Paris After 4 Years

The Jean Paul Gaultier Fashion Exhibition is making it’s homecoming back to Paris. The moving exhibition was first launched in Montreal in June 2011, and has since then been making a global tour with stops in cities like Brooklyn, London, and even Melbourne. The exhibition, which has drawn over 1.4 million visitors since Montreal, will open at the Grand Palais in Paris on April 1 and will run until August 3.

The retrospective features 175 Haute Couture and ready-to-wear garments by the French designer that span over the years of 1976 to current, making this exhibition a cohesive look at 40 years of Gaultier’s career.

In an interview with Style.com, Gaultier confessed about the exhibit’s return to Paris, “I think of this [event] as more of a collection: I wanted it to be life and show life as I like it. I wanted it to be like a party—the perfect occasion to do a kind of perfect show. This time it’s very personal because it’s in Paris.” Gaultier went on to reveal, “Coincidentally, it happens that I staged my first show in the planetarium at the Palais de la Découverte [located in an adjacent part of the Grand Palais complex], nearly 40 years ago, in October 1976.”

The Jean Paul Gaultier Fashion Exhibition held it’s opening reception last night to a star studded audience with guests that ranged from DJ Leigh Lezark to French shoe designer Christian Louboutin.

See an exclusive look at The Jean Paul Gaultier Fashion Exhibition in the gallery above.