Duran Lantink, wild boy

Duran Lantink has always been a rebel. Aged 10, he would sneak into his mum’s wardrobe, take her scarves and create makeshift outfits in which he would then parade around at school. It was, you might say, the start of a three-decade apprenticeship: in 2024, Lantink won the Karl Lagerfeld Prize at the 11^th edition of the LVMH Prize. A year after that, he was appointed creative director at Jean Paul Gaultier.

“Changing identities with clothes was fun,” the Dutch designer remembers of his childhood in The Hague, on a drab, wintry Monday morning at the Rosewood hotel in central London. ​“I had a knitted sweater with a breastplate that my aunt gave me. My mother put it in the wash and shrank it!” Gutted, still. And even as a fashion-forward youngster, game recognised game. ​“As a kid, there was a freedom in Jean Paul Gaultier that I really liked. It made me feel a bit naughty, in a way.”

And he had a style muse much s closer to home, too. ​“What my mum would wear during the day became something completely different at night. It was how I discovered clothing could be performative.”

Growing up in the Nineties in the Netherlands’ administrative capital, unconventional forms of self- expression were something he rarely witnessed outside of his home. Nonetheless, Gaultier’s work cut through. ​“There were no limitations on how I dressed,” he says of his teenage years. A devil-horned beanie gifted by family friends and a mesh ​“naked top” he once wore to high school were his earliest introductions to the designer’s wares. ​“For me, JPG was all about liberation, about tapping into different communities. It very much was [about] the joy of feeling free in whatever you can do with yourself.”

A full circle moment indeed, then, for the Paris-based 38-year-old to carry this spirit into his role at Jean Paul Gaultier, which was announced last April. Whether designing for his namesake brand or for JPG, Lantink has mastered the art of viral designs. And whether he’s adding silicone breasts to a chest plate, crafting naked bodysuits or building out proportions that allude to padding where it shouldn’t be, the big boss, surely, would approve.

His outfit today, though, is the antithesis of all that drama: plain pair of dark wash jeans, long-sleeved top, khaki puffer gilet, adidas Gazelles. His cracked, caseless iPhone lies face down on the table, plugged into wired headphones.

“People [say I’m] doing things for shock value, to create attention for me or something,” says the man who sent models down the runway in eye-popping skin suits (more on that later). ​“But, no, that’s not the case.” Certainly, though, he’s not following any of the current dominant trends. ​“I saw something online where there’s a group of young people that are saying: ​‘Fuck Nike Tech!’ Young boys are wearing quarter-zip jumpers instead. It speaks to the conservative period we’re in. I don’t feel connected to that.”

From a young age, Lantink was less into labels and more fascinated with the idea that clothing could be used as a vessel for shapeshifting. As he puts it: ​“I liked working with existing pieces and transforming them into my own identity.”

Those instincts shaped all his post- school choices. In 2010, he studied for a short time at Amsterdam Fashion Institute before enrolling at Gerrit Rietveld Academie to study fine art and design. By 2017, he’d not only completed a masters course at sister school Sandberg Instituut but had refined his speciality: working with deadstock fabrics, splicing and merging pieces together to create tactile items that represented his provocative, unrestrained vision of fashion.

Barely a year later, his first brush with notoriety: designing the crescent-moon-shaped ​“vulva” trousers for Janelle Monae’s 2018 music video Pynk. A year after that, a showcase at Somerset House, staged by the British Fashion Council, brought him to the attention of UK buyers. Liberty was an early stockist and, with Lantink now boasting a 2019 LVMH Prize nomination, Browns swiftly followed suit, collaborating with the designer on a forward-thinking, sustainable, Nick Knight-shot capsule collection.

As his reputation and namesake brand both blossomed in the early 2020s, it felt like only a matter of time before a major fashion house came calling. Which, in spring last year, Jean Paul Gaultier did.

“He deserves all of it and more!” says Ida Petersson, the former director of women’s and men’s buying at Browns. ​“We found Duran when he was shortlisted for the LVMH Prize and were blown away by his innovative designs and unique way of reimagining deadstock. Through him, we found the most beautiful way of giving these items a new lease of life. Still today, [the capsule collection] is one of the absolute favourite projects of my career.”

Then, Covid. At a time when lock- down restrictions meant limited in-person gatherings, he smartly pivoted to a digital-only presentation. ​“I thought: ​‘Wouldn’t it be fabulous if I did a show, but instead of people, it’s full of drones?’” The result: his SS/​AW21 show, staged in Palace Soestdijk, Amsterdam, in which drones flew through the air, buzzing around models and filming looks as they walked through var- ious decorated rooms. There was a further twist, too: ​“The front row was filled with ​‘guests’, including an Anna Wintour bot and a Rihanna bot,” he explains. ​“You have all these A‑listers not in a human body.”

The show earned rave reviews. Capitalising on his momentum, Lantink decided to take another big swing. It was tot ziens, Amsterdam, and bonjour, Paris.

To help fund his Paris Fashion Week 2023 debut, Lantink made custom outfits for celebrities. Then, for the show itself, he hired a small venue for ​“around €5,000”. But the intimate environment helped focus attention on his newly finessed craftsmanship. In came cropped, rounded tops, shoulder pads kissing models’ ears and trench coats filled with padding. By SS25, Naomi Campbell was walking for Duran Lantink.

Then came his industry-rocking AW25 show, Duranimal. Opera- style singers sitting in office cubicles soundtracked proceedings. Argentinian model Mica Argañaraz opened in a silicone male-bodied chestplate with abs, her hair slightly tousled. Alex Consani walked in a Y‑shaped top, by this point a signature of Lantink’s. Then came look 53: male model Chandler Frye stepped out, encased in a silicone mould featuring large breasts that bounced with his every step.

The internet, naturally, lost its mind, but the designer insists it was never his intention to offend. ​“I still don’t understand the reaction,” Lantink says, totally deadpan.

“Not everybody has to like it, and that’s OK. There’s never an idea to hurt anyone, but you can never please everyone. Maybe there’s people that might think: ​‘Yeah, I’d wear that.’ I’m trying to give it to them.”

“It’s a mirror towards the world we’re living in,” he continues. ​“We’re all talking about body transformation, beauty and trying to get the perfect body and face. But then you put it on a different gender, then all of a sudden it becomes shock value. But if you put Botox in your face and you push up your lips, that’s fine.” He pauses, then adds with a knowing chuckle: ​“Perhaps I’m saying something dangerous.”

Meanwhile, a previous generation’s enfant terrible had been keeping an eye on the Dutch disruptor. After Gaultier’s 2020 retirement, his house had been run by a rotating cast of guest designers, most recently Simone Rocha, Ludovic de Saint Sernin and Olivier Rousteing. Then, in April last year, Lantink received a call from a headhunter.

“Gaultier wasn’t the first brand to approach me,” reveals Lantink. ​“But I really thought it was for a collab.” After signing an NDA, he was told details of the job. Memories of his teenage years came rushing back. This, inarguably, was the job his 10-year-old self had started working towards. ​“My horn beanie, my mum dressing up with her friends… Gaultier reminded me of this pulsing energy that feels non-existent [elsewhere in fashion].”

After accepting the role and re- locating to Paris full-time, Lantink focused on harnessing the nostalgia and free-spiritedness that were tied to his memories of the house. But even though he had only four months to create his debut collection, instead of browsing the JPG archive, his first port of call was the city where he cut his teeth: Amsterdam.

“There’s a book called Het RoXY Archief, 1988 – 1999 by Cleo Campert, which captures all the moments of the RoXY during a small period in Amsterdam,” he says of a nightclub beloved by his mum, stepdad and their friends. ​“Leigh Bowery performed, Deee-Lite too. JPG himself and Thierry Mugler would visit the club. All kinds of people would gather together and dance their asses off. That book became my bible. Taking this job, I thought about what that scene would look like today.”

The result: a ready-to-wear SS26 collection that launched at Paris Fashion Week in October. Titled Junior (the name of Gaultier’s dif- fusion line), it featured a satsuma- orange jumpsuit with cone- shaped protruding boobs, hairy naked bodysuits, nautical stripes stretched across second-skin strapless jumpsuits, gold sequin knickers with a top cupping the chest, held together by technical buckles, and dresses with straps that resembled the end of a trumpet.

It was radical in the way much of Gaultier’s earliest designs were: passionate, untameable, ingenious works that sparked debate. ​“I didn’t look at the reviews,” he insists, although he’s of course aware that they were, to say the least, divisive. ​“I got messages from people around me saying: ​‘Are you seeing what’s happening?’ But people should have conversations [in person] and that’s what I am here for. I’m not here to please people by designing a nice coat.”

Elias Medini, the fashion commentator better known as Lyas, is unflinching when it comes to his fashion choices. At the Fashion Awards in London in December, he wore Lantink’s hairy, naked body- suit. ​“It [was] a way to be more comfortable with my naked body,” he explains. ​“Wearing a print of someone else’s naked body helped me find acceptance in my own.” For him, watching Lantink’s JPG debut, ​“it was exciting to see someone not give a fuck and actually be respectful of the essence of the brand, which is punk and enfant terrible. For this alone, we should support the last free-thinking designer in fashion.”

Lantink is adamant that, while he’s certainly channelling that ineffable Jean Paul Gaultier essence, he
won’t be seeking refuge in designs directly inspired by the JPG archive. That, he clarifies, isn’t indicative of a lack of respect. Quite the contrary. ​“Not going to the archive does not mean I don’t know what he’s done – I have seen at least 100 shows. I know what’s there. But it’s about trying to get into his mindset and transport that into 2026, rather than giving people the vintage idea of what Gautier is.”

Jean Paul Gaultier himself is in his corner. At their first meeting, Lantink was understandably nervous and, he admits with a laugh, reverted to being a fanboy. But now they have a good relationship and catch up once a month. So, what did 73-year- old JPG make of his Dutch successor’s riotous debut collection? ​“He said it was ​‘very Gaultier and very me’,” Lantink recounts, laughing again. “[That] it had the complete spirit of how he was when he was young. So he was very happy with it – and very proud of it, I think.”

Ultimately, then, as he puts the finishing touches to his second JPG collection for AW26 in March, Duran Lantink feels emboldened to keep pushing his expansive, dynamic vision forward. ​“I’m not a machine and I’m not going to copy Jean Paul,” he concludes – firmly, passionately. ​“That wouldn’t be right by him. And he wouldn’t want that, either.”

HAIR Franziska Presche at The Good Company Reps MAKEUP Mel Arter at Julian Watson Agency CASTING DIRECTOR Simone Schofer at Artistry TALENT Sihana at IMG and Haojie at Elite London PHOTOGRAPHER’S ASSISTANTS Dylan Massara and Abena Appiah ON SET PRODUCER Chloe Slattery