Duran Lantink’s fever dream for Jean Paul Gaultier: chaos, nudity & rebellion

Camz
Oct 11
3 min read

The enfant terrible gets a worthy heir

As the Paris fashion crowd descended into the shadowy depths of the Musée du Quai Branly, the energy in the air was… unstable. After a season full of safe debuts, whispers spread that fashion’s long-awaited disruption might finally arrive.

Enter Duran Lantink, the Dutch provocateur whose debut as Jean Paul Gaultier’s new creative director was anything but timid.

Gaultier, once crowned the industry’s enfant terrible for daring to put men in skirts and corsets, has now handed his rebellion torch to a designer who seems eager to set the whole house ablaze. After years of guest-designed collections, Puig’s decision to appoint Lantink as permanent creative director feels like a deliberate shock to the establishment. The setting: dark, underground, slightly disorienting felt less like a runway and more like an initiation ritual.

A fashion education written in mesh and latex

For Lantink, Gaultier is more than a house; it is a childhood obsession. His first piece, a devil-horned beanie received at twelve, became a second skin. On his first day at a conservative high school, he wore a sheer Ganesh-printed JPG mesh shirt with nipples unapologetically out. The message was already clear: he didn’t just wear fashion, he weaponized it.

“Jean Paul taught me that clothing can give you an identity,” Lantink recalled. That early thrill of defiance became the foundation of his work, and tonight, it burst into full bloom.

The show: latex, body hair and club chaos

Let’s start with the obvious: the latex. The viral nude tops of his last season men in women’s torsos, women in men’s, were mere prelude. Tonight, things escalated. The opening look was a full-body latex suit printed with a male torso so explicit that one could practically hear editors clutching their pearls. Another model emerged in a hirsute bodysuit that blurred the line between human and costume, erotic and absurd. Somewhere in the crowd, a fashion editor faintly whispered, “What was that?” and frankly, that was the point.

There were cone bras of course but reimagined as sculptural wire constructions, twisting like metallic exoskeletons around the body.

The iconic marinière stripes reappeared, not as sailor shirts but as optical illusions wrapped around wired mini-dresses, each with a sinuous S-shaped curve that distorted and exaggerated the body’s natural lines. It was as if Gaultier’s archives had been fed through an algorithm trained on late-night techno clubs and queer fantasy.

Then came the trousers or what could be generously described as trousers. Two thin strips of fabric stretched taut from the waist down to the ankles, leaving everything else to the imagination or rather, not at all.

They flapped and shimmered under the heat of the spotlights, perfect for a sweaty rave or perhaps a post-apocalyptic beach party.

The spirit of rebellion reborn

If Lantink’s Gaultier had a message, it wasn’t whispered,it was screamed, danced, and sweat through mesh. “I work very intuitively,” he said backstage, smiling like someone who knows exactly the kind of chaos he just unleashed. “I’m really trying to catch an energy.” That energy was youth; raw, unapologetic, and defiantly alive.

This was clubwear as armor, streetwear as manifesto. Every look felt like a dare: to look, to react, to question. For every grown-up in the audience raising an eyebrow, there was a twenty-year-old in the front row ready to take notes for their next night out.

Conclusion: disturbing the peace, fashionably

As the lights dimmed and the audience stumbled back up into daylight, one thing was clear: Duran Lantink has not come to preserve the Gaultier myth. He’s here to corrupt it, twist it, and dance on its latex-covered grave.

If Jean Paul Gaultier made fashion cheeky, Lantink just made it feral. And in an industry gasping for authenticity and risk, maybe that’s exactly the kind of beautiful disturbance it needed.

Some editors might still be recovering, but somewhere, Jean Paul himself is probably grinning and maybe, just maybe, planning his outfit for the afterparty.

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