Jean Paul Gaultier
Explore 175 Jean Paul Gaultier fragrances — notes, longevity, sillage and community ratings, matched to how you want to smell. The house dates from 1982, founded by Jean-Paul Gaultier.
About the house
Jean Paul Gaultier was born in Arcueil in 1952 and had no formal design training. Pierre Cardin saw his sketches and hired him as an assistant in 1970. Gaultier founded his own fashion label in 1982, and by 1990 he had designed the cone bra Madonna wore on tour.
The house dates its fragrance line to Classique in 1993. Le Male followed in 1995, composed by Francis Kurkdjian when he was 26, and it was his first success as a perfumer. Kurkdjian has said the idea for it came from a men's hairdresser of the 1950s. The bottle is a male torso in a striped shirt, sold in an aluminium can, and Gaultier had used the torso motif since 1980. Kurkdjian went on to compose other Gaultier scents, among them Gaultier2 and Fleur du Male, though sources differ on whether Gaultier2 arrived in 2005 or 2006.
Ownership of the fashion house changed hands several times. Hermès took a 35% stake in 1999 and later raised it to 45%, and Gaultier ran Hermès womenswear as creative director from 2003 to 2010. Puig then bought Hermès' share along with 10% from Gaultier himself and became majority shareholder. Gaultier stayed on as artistic director until he retired in January 2020, after a show marking 50 years in fashion.
Fragrances were made by Shiseido's Beauté Prestige International from 1995 to 2015. Puig took over the fragrance licence in 2016 for a reported $79.2 million. Puig is a Barcelona family company founded in 1914, and it listed on the Spanish stock exchange in May 2024.
Signature notes
These notes show up in Jean Paul Gaultier fragrances at least twice as often as in the catalogue as a whole. We worked this out from each fragrance's listed notes. It is not how the house describes itself.
Best known for
Le Male Le Parfum, Le Male, Le Male Elixir, Ultra Male, Le Beau Le Parfum and Classique — the most-rated in our catalogue.
Releases
From 1992 to 2026, 175 fragrances with a known year.
Said to be the inspiration
Some houses say which fragrance one of theirs was inspired by. These are the Jean Paul Gaultier fragrances they name.
- One house describes one fragrance as inspired by Scandal Gold. What they say →
- One house describes one fragrance as inspired by Scandal Pour Homme Elixir. What they say →
- One house describes one fragrance as inspired by Scandal Elixir. What they say →
