Inspired even as a boy by the Folies Bergere, the legendary Paris cabaret venue, couturier Jean-Paul Gaultier always wanted to stage a show there. "But what story can I tell?" he muses in this doc about the six months of preparation that went into the show. "Mine." Combining fashion with film, dance, theater, and unapologetic over-the-top-ness, the revue offers a 40-year career retrospective of the designer who is practically never spoken of without using the phrase enfant terrible. Notorious among cinephiles for his costumes for The Fifth Element and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover and among pop fans for Madonna's pointy cone brassiere, he also incorporated teddy bears and S&M fetish gear as design motifs. In the show, the fanciful and outrageous meets the naughtily witty (a skit sending up Vogue dragon lady Anna Wintour) and the poignant (a tribute to his partner Francis Menuge, who died in 1990).

Jean-Paul Gaultier's job is not to make a show or a perfume, nor to speak to the media or to present shows on MTV, it is to make clothes. He draws them, but above all, he creates them by draping them, by building them on the body of a cabin mannequin. Gaultier recreates in front of the camera twelve of his most emblematic creations. The dresses appear before our eyes and we follow the thought of Jean-Paul Gaultier walking between ideas and matter. The work of Gaultier, told by himself, as a lasting creative testament.

On the occasion of Jean Paul Gaultier's 40-year career and his show "Fashion Freak Show" at the Folies Bergère, France 2 has given carte blanche to the most famous French couturier of the world who has created for the first time a great show of varieties fully immersed in his universe. Jean Paul Gaultier who, in his childhood, dreamed while watching the variety shows of Maritie and Gilbert Carpentier, takes the reins of this great entertainment mixing music and fashion.