Gaultier's great goodbye

After 50 years, the designer held his last show, and it was a doozy

Jean Paul Gaultier, the French designer who put Madonna in a bullet-bra and men in skirts, scandalised the couture establishment by hosting the TV show “Eurotrash” and never forgot his sense of humour, yet could cut a tuxedo with such panache he was regarded as an heir to Yves Saint Laurent, said goodbye to the runway after 50 years this week.

He did it in the gilded 19th-century Théâtre du Châtelet, where the Ballets Russes once danced, in front of a packed 2,500-seat audience that included the former supermodel and the former French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, and the designers Nicolas