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“I’m probably going to be slaughtered for it,” predicted Duran Lantink before his debut collection as artistic director of Jean Paul Gaultier this afternoon. Succeeding French fashion’s most irreverent iconoclast, who retired from design after presenting his 50th-anniversary couture show in January 2020, was never going to be easy. But as Gaultier himself once said: “It’s great to be who you are” — and Lantink was determined to retain his own process and essence while making this debut. So did he?
Absolutely, reckoned the influential talent spotter and creative business consultant Julie Gilhart as she left the show. “Duran dared like a young Jean Paul once did,” she said: “I loved the opening look with its pointed-bust reference — pure Gaultier energy.” She added: “When I was a buyer, I used to buy Gaultier and always left those shows thinking, where’s the afterparty? Duran’s show had that same vibe. It was sexy in Duran’s imaginative way, confident and ready to turn heads wherever the night goes next.”
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Lantink was appointed this April to act as permanent creative lead at Gaultier following a five-year period in which the house’s fashion output — strictly limited to couture — was designed by a rolling cast of guests. These cameo creatives comprised Chitose Abe, Glenn Martens, Olivier Rousteing, Haider Ackermann, Julien Dossena, Simone Rocha, Nicolas Di Felice and Ludovic de Saint Sernin. All of them professed themselves honoured to be adding their names to the history of a house founded by one of modern French fashion’s most seditiously democratic designers. Despite focusing on couture for his last decade of work, Gaultier’s spirit has always been informed by the streets. As he once observed: “It is always the poorly dressed people who are most interesting.”
“He challenged not just runway conventions but also mainstream attitudes,” wrote Nicole Phelps in Vogue Runway’s review of Jean Paul Gaultier’s last-ever ready-to-wear show. Raised in the Paris suburbs, Gaultier worked first at Pierre Cardin, Jacques Esterel, and Patou before presenting his first show in 1976 and founding his company in 1978. During the 1980s, he developed a disruptive dialect of satirically progressive codes that included menswear skirts, eroticised marinière shirts, and cone-shaped bullet bras. His fame expanded when he brought that last motif into the orbit of Madonna for her Blonde Ambition tour of 1990.
In 1993, he launched his first fragrance, Classique, which was followed two years later by Le Male. In 2003, he was appointed creative director at Hermès, where he remained until 2010. Financial pressures and the shifting fashion landscape led him to end his ready-to-wear line in 2014, focusing on haute couture and fragrance. In 2016, however, the Spanish beauty and fashion conglomerate Puig acquired the Jean Paul Gaultier brand and fragrance license from Shiseido, consolidating creative and commercial control under one owner.
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Puig, which reported revenues of €4.79 billion and profits of €530 million in 2024, has taken a long-term approach to rebuilding Gaultier’s fashion presence — a strategy which also naturally reflects the group’s core focus on fragrance and beauty. The five-year rotating designer policy for couture brought a lot of goodwill to a house already well-regarded for its creativity. And with the appointment of Lantink, it has apparently found a permanent lead innovatively provocative as Gaultier himself.
“If we’re not being radical, then what are we doing?” said Lantink when he was awarded the Woolmark Prize earlier this year. After founding his brand in 2016, Lantink served notice of his arrival with the ‘vagina pants’ featured in Janelle Monáe’s ‘Pynk’ music video. He made his debut on the Paris schedule in 2023 and has since shown collections that take dramatic liberties with the human form. The trompe l oeil torsos of his AW25 collection seemed to have a particularly powerful unintended connective resonance with the iconography of Gaultier.
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Lantink delivered this article’s opening prediction while speaking to Phelps on yesterday’s Vogue podcast. He explained that this debut has seen him lean into the history of Junior Gaultier, the diffusion line that ran between 1987 and 1994 and found wide street-level currency. However, he added, he had yet to even peek into the house’s archives: “I decided to approach it a bit like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory… I really want to go in, but first I want to imagine what’s behind that door and create a fantasy world.”
So did Lantink’s pure imagination deliver a bad nut or a golden ticket? Here’s what members of today’s audience thought.
Simone Marchetti, Vanity Fair Italia editor-in-chief and Vanity Fair European editorial director
In a season of fashion conservatism and beautiful, nostalgic clothes, Duran at JPG went in the opposite direction. His debut was disturbing and full of clever mistakes. Less than a breath of fresh air, it was a dose of homoeopathic good poison against nostalgia.
Bosse Myhr, director menswear, womenswear and childrenswear at Selfridges
Duran Lantink revisited some of Gaultier’s most recognisable motifs, including stripes, conical forms, and spirals, while also expanding them into new terrain. The surfacing of performance fabrics gives many pieces a sporty edge, but with a clearly hedonistic intention. He challenged gender norms by dressing men in skimpy partywear and dresses with the same revealing directness afforded to his women. And the beachwear riffs were especially daring: the bikinis and ‘mono-mini’ silhouettes push the body into a provocative geometry.
Nick Tran, head of buying and merchandising, Dover Street Market Paris
It was Duran turned on, up and around. Specific, challenging and fun — as JPG should be.
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David Martin, founder and editor-in-chief, Odda magazine
Duran is disruptive and makes people talk. Jean Paul was exactly like that when his career started. We need Duran — culture needs his ideas and fashion needs to shake it up a bit from time to time in order to support the vision of tomorrow.
Edward Buchanan, designer and journalist
Duran really knows how to twist our libidos into a tailspin. I was really looking forward to this debut because there was real risk involved in hiring someone with no experience leading a heritage house. Jean Paul Gaultier was an originator in a time when being provocative in the design space was rarely celebrated. This show really felt akin to the origins of the brand. It felt like such a celebration of raw creative freedom, with memorable consideration of the codes of Gaultier. The sailor stripes were there, the tattoo was there, the eroticism was there, the off-colour stories were present — and the coolness was there. A solid, animated beginning.
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