Jean Paul Gaultier wanted to be a designer aged nine.

Jean Paul Gaultier knew he wanted to be a designer at nine years old after he watched a show with his relatives.

The 65-year-old fashion mogul - who launched his first clothing line in 1976 - has admitted after watching a cabaret show as a child he was inspired to start creating extravagant garments, although he was ridiculed by his school teacher for his creations.

The creative mastermind told WWD: "You know how it all started for me? As a child I was often at my grandma's -- Mémé Garabé -- and she used to let me watch anything on TV. I remember one night, I was nine years old, and they were screening the premiere of the Folies Bergère. It was in black and white and there used to only be one channel back then. There was the director of the theater and his wife, who was very well-dressed, and then down from the ceiling came these two dancers in fishnets, ostrich feathers and glittering diamonds, like an apparition. I was transfixed, I found it so beautiful.

"That night I put some feathers on my teddy bear, Nana, then the next day during class at school I started daydreaming and did a sketch of the dancers in their outfits, but the teacher spotted me. She made me stand up, rapped my knuckles with a ruler, made me stand on a platform and tacked the sketch to my back using safety pins -- so already very punk. To humiliate me, she made me do a tour of all the classrooms, only it had the opposite effect."

However, the former creative director of Hermès - who held the title at the fashion house for seven years from 2003 - has admitted the unforgettable moment only spurred him on further as his schoolmates would ask Gaultier to make pieces for them.

Full story at Female First.