Duran Lantink’s
Jean Paul Gaultier Debut
Anders Christian Madsen reviews Duran Lantink’s debut collection for Jean Paul Gaultier, for Spring/Summer 2026.
Backstage, Duran Lantink said he tackled his debut collection for Jean Paul Gaultier from memory rather than archival research. In a fashion world that’s becoming more and more obsessed with codes or in some cases even returning the contemporary proposals of houses to replicas of their founders’ work, that was a refreshing approach.
Dutch-born Lantink was first shortlisted for the LVMH Prize in 2019, and started showing his socio-political, gender-focused, form-expanding avant-gardism at Paris Fashion Week in 2023. The year after, he won the Karl Lagerfeld LVMH Prize. Last season, he broke the internet with a provocative collection featuring two torso tops—a male and female—each worn by the opposite sex. That, along with everything else, landed him the creative directorship of Jean Paul Gaultier.
His debut, presented in an industrial subterranean corridor of the Musée du quai Branly — Jacques Chirac, marked the house’s return to the ready-to-wear schedule after seasons of haute couture collections created by guest designers. While the show didn’t offer internet-breaking moments, it had plenty of the thought-provocation Lantink is known for.
There were women dressed in bodysuits printed with the hairy torsos, legs and private parts of men. There were men dressed in thong bodies that inflated into bomber jackets at the top. There were padded sci-fi superheroine bras and knickers covered in golden sequins. On the Sunday afternoon of a new Paris schedule that has been grueling to say the least, it certainly awakened the senses. But the best part of Lantink’s show was the way he dealt with the heritage of it all.
JEAN PAUL GAULTIER
In a season where some fourteen established designers — Lantink being the only emerging one among them — are entering formidable houses, we need to remember why we’re keeping old brands alive like this. In the 1990s, when designers like John Galliano and Lee McQueen were going to Dior and Givenchy, they didn’t produce one-to-one Bar jackets and Bettina blouses, hoping to somehow please a nerdy, judgy peanut gallery on social media, who analyzes every point of reference from some fusty heritage point of view. They took what they wanted from the hallowed codes and created something new and fabulous (that also sold!). Surely, that’s why we place new creatives in old houses. If you want the same garments that were already made by founders years or decades ago, buy them at auction.
At Jean Paul Gaultier, Lantink did it the ’90s way: he took spontaneous inspiration from the history of the founder — who was in attendance — and created a look that felt JPG but wasn’t chained to it. He turned the emblematic sailor into a look composed of a skewed white naval jacket and a paper boat hat, he interpreted the tattoo prints in kind of ancient tribal wall scribblings through what looked like tufting on tulle, and magnified Gaultier’s already-inflated bomber jacket to armor-like dimensions. There were plenty more memories in there, but the point of it all was that they didn’t require us to list them. Now, the challenge for Lantink is to translate his cheeky ideas to a shop floor. He’s got the showmanship down, and certainly the right attitude.
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