He is described as an "enfant terrible" of the fashion industry and is known for his unconventional designs with motifs including corsets, marinières, and tin cans.

He was the creative director for French luxury house Hermès from 2003 to 2010, and retired following his 50th-anniversary haute couture show during Paris Fashion Week in January 2020.

[6] Although most people found his designs decadent at the time, fashion editors, notably Melka Tréanton of Elle, Claude Brouet and Catherine Lardeur of French Marie Claire, were impressed by his creativity and mastery of tailoring, and later launched his career.

[15] His garments were on sale at Bergdorf Goodman in New York as soon as 1984, and already lauded by Dawn Mello and Polly Allen Mellen.

[20] For the premiere of the 1985 movie Desperately Seeking Susan, Madonna wore a skirt with men's suspenders she had bought from Gaultier.

[24] In 1989, he was tailoring a costume for Prince when the singer walked away, offended, thinking Gaultier had told him "fuck you" where the couturier with a heavy French accent had said "faux cul" (false bottom).

[21][25] At the end of the 1980s, Gaultier suffered some personal losses, and in 1990 his boyfriend and business partner, Francis Menuge, died of AIDS-related causes.

Junior Gaultier's name was reused in 2009 for the launching of the child's wear, to be completed with a Baby Line in 2011.

[30] He sponsored the 2003–04 exhibit in the Costume Institute of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art entitled "Braveheart: Men in Skirts", which showed designs by Dries van Noten, Vivienne Westwood, and Rudi Gernreich in addition to Gaultier's in order to examine "designers and individuals who have appropriated the skirt as a means of injecting novelty into male fashion, as a means of transgressing moral and social codes, and as a means of redefining an ideal masculinity.

"[39] That exhibit is on tour with venues at the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design (Arkitektur- och designcentrum, ArkDes) in Stockholm,[6] the Brooklyn Museum in New York City,[40] the Barbican Centre in London,[41] the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne,[42] and the Grand Palais in Paris.

The exhibition in Paris, which took place from April to August 2015, was the subject of a documentary called Jean Paul Gaultier at the Grand Palais aired exclusively on Eurochannel.

[47] He announced on 17 January 2020 that his next Paris haute couture fashion show would be his last and that he was retiring from the runway.

For the Eurovision Song Contest 2006, he dressed Greek entrant Anna Vissi, where she performed on homesoil.

[50] He designed the dress that Anggun wore as she represented France during the grand-finals of the 2012 edition held in Baku, Azerbaijan.

[56] With this purchase, Puig now holds control of both the fashion and fragrance divisions of the Jean Paul Gaultier brand.

[58] Le Male was the top-selling men's fragrance in the European Union in 2012, and holds a strong market position in Australia and the United States.

[62] Jean Paul Gaultier's characteristic irreverent style dating from 1981 has led to his being known as the enfant terrible of French fashion.

[16] His main inspirations are French popular culture, the mixing of types and genders, sexual fetishism and futurist designs.

Through this collection, he was able to freely express the scope and range of his aesthetic, drawing inspiration from radically divergent cultures, from Imperial India to Hasidic Judaism.