October 6, 2026 |
The front view doesn’t do justice to Duran Lantink’s ingenious Jean Paul Gaultier collection. Head on, a halter dress is recognisably a halter dress, a trench coat is recognisably a tench, a waistcoat is a waistcoat. Adjust your line of sight and a whole other world unfolds of 3D sculptural experiments with silhouette. He’s up there with the Japanese in fashion, approaching shape in such a striking and idiosyncratic way. So, a leather coat has the profile of pointed breast based on the famous Jeanne Paul Gaultier conical bra. Jackets and knits were routinely scooped out at the front to reveal a sculptural, pointed leather bra top. Even a man’s field jacket had pointed chest pieces.
Familiar pieces were made strange throughout. Halter dresses hung away from the body, creating space between skin and cloth, a cropped check shirt had a tubular frontage, skirts had stiff elliptical hems which revealed the knickers beneath and the collars on coats stood proud of the neck, framing the face.
The Gaultier archive doesn’t weight heavy on Lantink. The references are there but he keeps it light and playful. Kilts worn by girls and boys referenced Gaultier’s famous men in skirts collection. The show began and ended with beautifully sculpted jackets, one in white another in black, proving to the doubters that Lantink can cut as well as he sculpts.
The designer introduced folksy embellishments and prints another Gaultier trope (Lantink sourced his from a folk dress archive in the Netherlands). Several looks embellished with bells came from a bell-embellished glove from a late 1980s JPG collection, that Lantink found in a drawer in his office. The Gaultier woman is not shy, he explained backstage. “She’s loud, she’s present, she’s there. She doesn’t back down,” he said of his bold, confident muse. Loud and proud.
Photography courtesy of Jean Paul Gaultier.
