Et Jean-Paul Gaultier créa l’homme
Le Male: Past, Present, Future
Sept. 10, 2025 - The Center, New York
On September 10th, Jean Paul Gaultier hosts “Et Gaultier Créa L’Homme: Le Male – Past, Present, Future,” an exhibition celebrating 30 years of its iconic fragrance Le Male and his unique and evolving vision of masculinity. Held at The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center (The Center), a close partner of Gaultier in New York City, the exhibition offers a sensory and immersive cultural experience engaging all the senses. Gaultier together with The Center, local artists and partners create an exceptional community and art event, under the striped banner of Le Male.
This journey into the visionary and daring universe of the creator unfolds in three stages, like the notes of a fragrance (top, heart, and base notes): the unique olfactory signature of Le Male and its evolution over the years, Jean Paul Gaultier’s revolutionary vision of masculinity, and the rich and fertile relationship between Gaultier’s world and a new generation of artists.
THE CENTER
Established in 1983 as a result of the AIDS crisis, New York City’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center has grown and evolved over the last four decades, creating and delivering services that empower people to lead healthy, successful lives. The Center operates in-person and virtually, providing recovery and wellness programs, economic advancement initiatives, family and youth support, advocacy, arts and cultural events, and space for community organizing, connection and celebration. In 2024 more than 300,000 visitors took part in social and cultural events at The Center, and an additional 2,500 people received direct mental health, substance use, career support and youth services.
A pioneering figure in inclusive fashion committed to the LGBT community, Jean Paul Gaultier has partnered with The Center for the last 5 years, supporting its life-saving and life-affirming services, especially its work with those affected by HIV/AIDS. Hosting the exhibition in this place makes sense in more ways than one: the designer has always used fashion as a voice to champion the LGBTQ+ community. Queerness, androgyny, pride and diversity are an inextricable part of the Jean Paul Gaultier brand DNA.
"Since I was a child, I’ve always been attracted to differences. I wanted to make fashion to be accepted and so that everyone who felt like me would be accepted. Fashion has that power."
Jean Paul Gaultier
OL’FACTORY
The top note of a fragrance is the first encounter with the scent, the most immediate part of the olfactory pyramid. In this show, it is embodied by the immersive environment Ol’Factory, a space dedicated to exploring the construction of Le Male. After the corset that liberated women and the “Classique” fragrance, Gaultier collaborated with perfumer Francis Kurkdjian in 1995 to create Le Male: the man as an object of desire. Far from precious gold-stamped packaging, the striped torso was encased in a metallic can: Le Male is accessible and perfumes everyone! Just as iconoclastic, the androgynous fragrance composed by Francis Kurkdjian disrupted the codes of traditional masculine perfumery with its clean and sensual notes, between lavender and carnal accords.
This first step into the exhibition is an olfactory striptease session plunging the visitor into the audacious world of Le Male: sensory installations, locker rooms pierced with glory holes diffusing the scent, or XXL bottles with suggestive shapes to be caressed. Immersed in a space where the many silhouettes of Le Male flankers are hidden in secret niches, the perfume releases an intoxicating trail. “Clean” and “dirty” scents entwine, and pedestals ooze waxes infused with amber, musk, vanilla and orange blossom. To be touched with the nose!
"With Le Male, at the time, we were outside the codes. Suddenly, this fragrance stood out with its incredible trail, a cheeky nod to traditional masculine perfumery, and this tin-can that defied the expected sophisticated packaging."
Francis Kurkdjian
DECONSTRUCTING MASCULINITY
After the top note, the heart note of a fragrance is the most voluptuous one, giving character, personality, and the general emotion to the composition. Here, it is embodied by the second part of the exhibition, dedicated to Jean Paul Gaultier’s revolutionary and deconstructed vision of masculinity.
Gaultier created Le Male in 1995 by tabooing stripes on the muscular torso of his glass ephebe. In doing so, he paid homage to Cocteau, Genet, Fassbinder and Tom of Finland; creatives who fantasized about the free and non-standardized body of the sailor in a desire to assert their queer identity. Symbolizing a deconstruction of virility, the sailor shirt became the designer’s uniform and appeared in his shows in countless variations - t-shirts, dresses, sweaters, vests, tank tops, and more - until it covered his fragrance! The stripes draw a line over conformity and celebrate uninhibited bodies.
In front of a baroque crimson velvet curtain, visitors experience the original and burning essence of Le Male: transgression. The theatrical lexicon so dear to the designer provides the backdrop for his most iconic creations. This section shows how fashion’s enfant terrible has, since his first menswear collection in 1984, continually disrupted, mixed, and played with the codes of “masculinity” to create an accessible and androgynous fashion. The exhibition showcases Jean-Paul Gaultier’s mastery in the art of perpetually renewing the fantasies and archetypes that fuel his inspiration. Bustiers with leather or lace abs, sailor vests or unisex skirts, his sunkissed ephebes flirt with nocturnal creatures: rascals dressed in tabooed mesh tops, fan-shaped necklines, tight glittering pants, or long-train corsets whose influence continues to shape both runways and streets in 2025. Everything blends together: genders, cultures, chic and popular, past, present, and future.
"Beauty is present in each of us. The key is wanting to see it, to look for it in others, and to appreciate it. I was criticized at the time because I didn’t work with the models that embodied the classical beauty standards of the day - the ethereal ‘be beautiful and shut up’ type. I was looking for modern people with personalities, who walked differently, and were much stronger."
Jean Paul Gaultier
CREATIVITY & ENGAGEMENT
The base note of a fragrance is what lingers on the skin after several hours; the most intense part of the olfactory pyramid, also known as the signature. The final part of the exhibition is the signature of “Et Gaultier Créa L’Homme.” It highlights contemporary artists carrying forward the transgressive spirit that made the enfant terrible of fashion both original and renowned. By immersing themselves in the culture Jean Paul Gaultier has eloquently and freely defended throughout his career (homoeroticism, seduction, androgyny, diversity, street and queer history), visitors are invited to explore the legacy the couturier leaves behind and experience exclusive collaborations that show how creativity transcends mediums and time. Art meets rebellion!
Pepo Moreno
The work of Spanish artist Pepo Moreno has grown to become both a mock and a celebration of gay stereotypes in Western pop culture. His paintings, drawings, and installations pinpoint thecontradictions of the modern queer life experience: From the sheer gayness of being out, proud and simply alive, to the forever young, forever beautiful obsession that ogen hides the loneliness and isolation of being an outcast. For “Et Gaultier Créa L’Homme,” Pepo Moreno presents two works echoing Jean Paul Gaultier’s universe: Big Boy and Dame Pepo. By transforming a drawing of a languid sailor smiling in the anticipation of an encounter into a gigantic inflatable balloon, the artist does more than move from 2D to 3D. He questions the entire sailor fantasy - the inevitable cliché of tabooed muscles rooted in queer culture. The paper muscles literally inflate, yet the visitors don’t lose themselves entirely. Like a cheeky reminder that these fantasies are mirages that must be constantly questioned, Moreno’s figure retains the cartoon aesthetic he loves, rendering the inflated colossus somewhat comical and superficial. The work Dame Pepo, on the other hand, recalls the first iteration of this exhibition in Paris, where Moreno transformed himself into “Dame Pepo” (a pun on Paris’s famous “dames pipi,” abendants of the city’s public toilets) and fully tabooed the restroom walls of the exhibition hall. Here, true to his desire to constantly twist mediums and preconceptions, Moreno translates one of his drawings into a neon representation of a nude man with abs drawn like a luminous mirage, attracting to him all the stray moths of the night.
Elliott Jerome Brown Jr.
Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. is an artist, photographer, and educator currently based in New York City. In his personal practice, Brown uses photography to explore representation through privacy and fiction. Occasionally, the work turns away from standard archival prints to examine photography as a sculptural, redactive, and site-specific process. Brown introduced these ideas to Jean Paul Gaultier during a week-long residency organized by the innovative platform “My Queer Blackness, My Black Queerness.” For the Le Male exhibition, Brown presents a black and white photograph, taken at Papi Juice, a longstanding celebration of queer and trans people of color, that crystallizes a club scene struck by lights. The photo is layered, gradually revealing kisses, movement, laughter, self-possession, and a palpable energy. Through the lens of Brown's camera, a disco ball shines light on a budding romance, a private joke, a moment of reflection, and a collective release. We can practically hear the photograph. In reading about Le Male, Brown was inspired by Gaultier’s desire to create a bottle that would “seduce and reveal its personality at first glance.” Brown then explained, “I like that my photograph does the opposite; within a space of desire, there is a range of interior and social expressions seen throughout this swatch of nightlife.”
Matías Alvial
Known for his 35mm Diary, an ongoing documentary project capturing the 2020s through film photography, Alvial is inspired by the early practices of Nan Goldin, Mitch Epstein, Lyle Ashton Harris, and Ryan McGinley. In dialogue with “Et Gaultier Créa L’Homme,” the artist presents an extract of his visual diary, a short video-collage built from camcorder footage with a raw, intimate, unfiltered quality. Showing a collection of moments that blur the line between private diary and communal archive, the film shifts between tenderness and playfulness, with hints of eroticism. Playful moments give way to tenderness and sensuality seen through closeness, skin, touch, and bodies - evoking the lingering warmth of physical and spiritual connection. The film itself is structured like a perfume: top notes evoking the sensory world (joy, play, sunlit laughter, beach waves); heart notes deepening emotional intimacy (soft embraces, touches, glances); and base notes exploring the symbolic realm of the intense core, the “signature” (sweat, skin, breath, erotic tension, physical closeness). The three notes assembled together in this film are a window opening onto a world of memories and remembrance.
Hugo Gyrl
Originally from Brooklyn, Hugo Gyrl aka Ellery Neon, is an artist, performer, MC and producer of the drag wrestling show CHOKE HOLE. They have been painting graffiti since their teens and now their work can be seen on murals and gallery walls in most major cities. For “Et Gaultier Créa L’Homme,” they created a larger than life male form in their typical style but inspired by Le Male iconography. In doing so, the artist created an ultimate fantasy of the sailor, investing a large surface to question our obsession with the “perfect body” and our deepest desires. Surrounding the painting with preparatory graffiti sketches, the installation evokes an accumulation of bodies and muscles covering the space from floor to ceiling. Gyrl thus echoes Keith Haring’s historic mural “Once Upon A Time In New York,” preserved at The Center, in the men's restroom just one flight up the stairs.
Hunter Abrams & Sam Lee
Hunter Abrams and Sam Lee are two New York City photographers whose work focuses on the world of fashion and its intersections with identity and queerness. For “Et Gaultier Créa L’Homme,” Abrams and Lee install a photobooth in the exhibition space. By recreating the deck of a ship, they evoke not only iconic Jean Paul Gaultier campaign imagery but also the contrast of a more liminal queer space within the context of an overtly and permanent queer space like The Center. Their immersive and graphic installation prevents visitors from approaching the exhibition passively; instead, they are invited to climb onto the deck and become sailors themselves. In Abrams and Lee’s recreated view of New York, seen behind the painted ship, the Statue of Liberty is replaced by the Le Male perfume bottle: a symbol of freedom, self-empowerment, and hope. Invited to take their picture within the work, visitors enter the phantasmagorical and liberating universe of the sailor so dear to Gaultier.
Peter McGough
Peter McGough is a New York City legend. His acclaimed memoir “I've Seen the Future and I'm Not Going” chronicled the art scene of New York City’s Lower East Side of the 1980s and mid-1990s. In response to this exhibition, McGough exhibits a selection of photographs from his iconic series The Alphabet, in which cyanotypes form the letters of the Roman alphabet using the nude male body. Alone or in groups, men pose as letters: two outstretched arms and one leaning body make a G, a couple forms an A. Some of the men wear flower crowns, others are unadorned. In this exhibition, eight inky-blue images hang in a special order to spell out GAULTIER. Using this nineteenth-century photographic process to render images inspired partly by Ancient Greece and classical sculpture, McGough’s nudes became instantly timeless. The concept of an alphabet formed from the human body is itself historical and McGough’s version of this typographical idiom is unapologetically queer.
Marko Monroe
A longtime friend of the house of Jean Paul Gaultier, stylist, artist and member of House of Avalon, Marko Monroe is now also the Labubu designer to the stars. Monroe first started to dress up the old furry lilliputian almost a year ago. He is now Hollywood’s go-to guy for custom versions of the popular plush toy that took over every bag in the world. He has recently been creating custom Labubus for Lisa from Blackpink, Lady Gaga, Katseye, the cast of the Netflix Series, Wednesday, Marc Jacobs, and the winners of MTV’s VMAs. Using the elf monster as a blank canvas, Monroe swaps out the fur, changes colors, paints the face and eyes, adds wigs, wings, jewelry, or specially tailored outfits. For “Et Gaultier Créa L’Homme,” Monroe creates a custom Zimomo inspired by Le Male. The fur of this unique edition is dyed and its entire body is covered in stripes like a sailor shirt. With its little silvery wings to match the perfume’s famous tin can, a sailor’s hat and a silvery chain with a Gaultier safety pin, this Labubu is ready to walk the runway!
Oscar Nñ
Oscar Nñ is a NYC-based DJ, artist, and one of the co-founders of Papi Juice. Oscar Nñ will play a 3-hour set on September 10 from 7-10pm for the VIP night of “Et Gaultier Créa L’Homme”.
Adam Eli
A community organizer and writer in New York City, Adam Eli brings invaluable support to this project through a dynamic creative partnership, contributing to artist curation press relations, and overall event strategy.
Spiral Theory Test Kitchen
After working with Precious Okoyomon on the “My Black Queerness” residency this summer, Jean Paul Gaultier once again collaborates with the poet for “Et Gaultier Créa L’Homme” by inviting Spiral Theory Test Kitchen (STTK), a collective comprising Okoyomon, Bobbi Salvör Menuez, and quori theodor, to create a new site-specific work. Gaultier has asked the queer artist trio to imagine an edible installation on the theme of New Masculinity, and their response is an interior vision of speculative manhood – a character study. Echoing the erotic universe of Le Male, STTK proposes culinary poems as windows into a psychosexual sports-charged universe. STTK plunges visitors into a gym locker room, where the eroticism of masculinity is performed and released, acknowledging this space as also one of interiority, feeling, and self-shaping. Building on this theme, STTK also explores the olfactory and humid imagination of sweat. They cameo the famous Le Male can - referencing the convenience and gendered history of canned food - by creating a perfume panna cotta that’s inspired by the notes of Le Male, served in the can. Finally, STTK plays with the symbolism of the sailor’s knot, by suspending bite-sized portions on a net, a net for fishing but also a net comprised of fishnet stockings – casting for but never fully catching the essence of the masculine experience.
Beyond
Each visitor is invited to leave carrying with them a transient archive of emotion and prints linked to Le Male’s universe. The gift bag contains a postcard with a fragmented narrative from parallel, imagined realities - meant to be sent or kept for oneself; this exhibition journal as a snapshot capturing the thoughts and theories developed within the exhibition; a limited-edition “Et Gaultier Créa L’Homme: Le Male, Past, Present, Future” t-shirt created especially for the event; and a special edition “can” keychain modeled on the iconic Le Male tin can. Design becomes a souvenir. Souvenirs become statements. Gaultier Forever!