Excitement about Duran Lantink's couture debut has been brewing since the announcement that he would be taking the reins of Jean Paul Gaultier. Ever the rule-breaker, his first foray into such a rule-bound world was an exciting prospect. Over his first two collections, he's bent the JPG archive into a distorted new shape.
The question hanging over this debut wasn't whether Lantink could speak the language of couture but whether he could preserve his irreverence once confronted with its rigid grammar. His answer was to drag Versailles through a body shop. Inspired by 18th-century court dress, particularly the exaggerated silhouettes associated with Marie Antoinette and the Ancien Régime, historical dress is considered through its oddity.
Rigid, tubular gowns had their sculptural frames forcing the body into unfamiliar proportions. Tulle erupted from necklines, hips and backsides like insulation bursting through cracked plaster, while suspended crinolines hovered around the body instead of disappearing beneath it.
Tailoring was equally disrupted: sharply cut jackets sprouted pyramid-like collars, and parkas were elevated through extravagant volumes. There was a new iteration of the male torso bodysuit Lantink sent down the runway in the last showing under his own label. Still on the body of model Leon Dame, this time the human shape is made squiggly.
Deadstock fabrics from the Gaultier archive were reworked into silhouettes that referenced historical couture while 3D-printed structural elements created exoskeletal frameworks beneath garments, replacing traditional boning with something closer to industrial design.
It was unmistakably Jean Paul Gaultier in spirit: irreverent, body-conscious and allergic to nostalgia. But rather than mining the house's greatest hits (the cone bra, Breton stripes or tattoo prints), Lantink distilled Gaultier's deeper ethos of provocation.
Words by Pedro Vasconcelos
