The first ever Parisian exhibition devoted to French fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier will open its doors on 1 April in the capital's Grand Palais museum.

On display are 336 pieces composed of 175 haute couture ensembles, ready-to wear outfits designed between 1976 and 2015 but also photos and videos. The pieces are displayed by theme and not by chronological order.

Gaultier is the designer behind the corset and conical bra Madonna wore for her 1990 world tour as well as stagewear for Kylie Minogue and costumes for the films of Pedro Almodovar and Luc Besson's The Fifth Element.

Known for his avant-garde style and love of counter-culture, Gaultier said the exhibition was a creation in itself and not a retrospective.

"I tried to display them by theme, themes that are important to me like working on skin, tattoos, piercing etc. androgenicity, the strong woman, the sexy woman as well, corsets, ethnicities, different ethnicities. With all this I tried to put them together," he said.

Another particular aspect of this production are the personal elements of Gaultier's childhood and adolescence that represent the roots of his inspirations and innovations.

During a news conference held on 30 March, the eclectic designer insisted upon the strong bond he had with his grandmother and how she often played a role in his creativity.

"I was lucky that my grandmother was different, that she had black feathers, an extraordinary corset and also she gave beauty advice to her clients.

"Meaning, I was there and I witnessed this, I was probably 9 or 10 years old and I would draw them before and after, in the way that they appeared to me, which used to really amuse them.

"And I would also hear my grandmother saying to them, you have to make nice little dishes for your husbands and maybe you can also change your clothes, style your hair differently, make a small change. So little by little, without realising it, I grasped the importance of clothing," he said.

The French fashion house of Jean Paul Gaultier opened the business in the early 1980s but announced last year in September that it will no longer produce men's and women's ready-to-wear.

The brand, owned by Spanish perfumer Puig, will now on focus on haute couture, perfume, and collaborations within the industry.

"Now it has changed (the world of fashion), there are enormous groups and stuff, it's the power of power, much more of that, a lot of marketing, many more guidelines to follow which I was not used to.

"I was extremely lucky to be free in what I was doing and set my own limits, my own boundaries. Nowadays if one must go through filter after filter, well then I am too old for that," he said.

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As well as some of his most emblematic artistic collaborations with filmmakers, dancers, models and international pop stars, numerous objects and archival documents are also on display to the public for the first time.

An array of sketches, stage costumes, footage from films, fashion shows and concerts, video clips, dance performances and TV shows retrace the diversity of his career.

The exhibition first began in 2011 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Since then, the exhibition has gone around the world, opening its doors in nine different cities including Dallas, Madrid, Rotterdam and Melbourne.

The show at the Grand Palais is the tenth stop of the exhibit with installations specially designed for Paris as a reminder of the impact the "enfant terrible", as Gaultier was called by the press, has had in the fashion world.

The curator of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Thierry-Maxime Loriot, said how important it was for this exhibition to reflect the return of the designer to his roots.

"Paris is the tenth venue of this incredible tour after a million and a half visitors. So for Paris it was important that Mr. Gaultier felt at home, it's like the return of the "enfant terrible" in Paris," he said.

"It's really important the strong social message in this exhibition. So you can see it through the exhibition with the mannequins, that speak, that reflect his universe but also the different skin tones and different body shapes throughout the exhibition," Loriot added.

The exhibition will run from 1 April to 3 August 2015.