From Upcycling Radical to Couture Visionary: The Dutch Designer Prepares to Usher in a New Era at JPG…

The revolving door of creative leadership in high fashion has just taken another exhilarating spin. In a move as unexpected as it is electrifying, Duran Lantink has officially been named the new creative director of Jean Paul Gaultier, assuming full responsibility over both its ready-to-wear and haute couture divisions. Announced early Tuesday morning, this appointment marks the maison’s first permanent creative leadership since Jean Paul Gaultier himself stepped down in 2020, and the brand pivoted to a rotating cast of guest designers.

Now, with Lantink at the helm, Gaultier is poised for a full-throttle renaissance—one that not only revives its ready-to-wear program, dormant since 2014, but also repositions the house as a major player in the industry’s most pressing dialogues: sustainability, identity, queerness, and reinvention.

“I consider Jean Paul Gaultier a genius and part of a generation that kicked down doors, so people like us can walk through them freely and be who we are without apology,” Lantink said in a statement. “Stepping into the role of creative director is a true honour.”

It is, in many ways, a unique alignment of energies: Lantink, the Amsterdam-born innovator known for repurposed garments and audacious silhouettes, stepping into the legacy of a designer who made transgression, hybridity, and provocation the very DNA of his brand.

A Radical Choice for a Radical House

Lantink is not a household name—yet. But he’s been fashion’s cult favorite disruptor for years. First drawing international attention in 2019 with his digital showroom of Frankenstein’d luxury pieces—one-of-a-kind garments spliced together from unsold inventory by brands like Gucci, Prada, and Balenciaga—Lantink challenged not just design aesthetics but the very logic of fashion consumption.

His work is steeped in ethical experimentation, but it never feels didactic. It’s jovial, punkish, and unapologetically queer. And it doesn’t just critique fashion’s broken systems—it reengineers them. This ethos earned him early support from industry insiders and museums alike, including inclusion in the V&A’s Fashioned from Nature exhibition and high praise from sustainable fashion advocates across Europe.

Now, at just 36, Lantink joins a rarefied group of independent designers tapped to lead heritage houses, following in the footsteps of Glenn Martens at Diesel and Ludovic de Saint Sernin at Ann Demeulemeester. But none of those roles carried the mythological weight of Jean Paul Gaultier—a brand not just known for design, but for shaping cultural narratives.

Gaultier’s Past: A House Built on Irreverence

It’s impossible to overstate Jean Paul Gaultier’s impact. Nicknamed the enfant terrible of French fashion, Gaultier exploded into the scene in the 1980s with designs that were equal parts costume and rebellion. He dressed men in skirts and corsets, placed conical bras on Madonna, and turned working-class garments into couture masterpieces.

Gaultier built a world where gender, class, race, and sexuality were playthings—not restrictions. And his runway shows were theatrical universes, populated by drag queens, older models, street-cast punks, and everything in between. He wasn’t just ahead of his time—he made time bend to his vision.

But by 2014, Gaultier had grown disenchanted with the pace and politics of ready-to-wear, shuttering that arm of his label to focus solely on haute couture. Even that came to an end with his final show in January 2020—a maximalist farewell that felt more like a cabaret of joy than a funeral.

Since then, the house has experimented with a guest designer model for couture, inviting the likes of Glenn Martens, Haider Ackermann, Simone Rocha, and Ludovic de Saint Sernin to interpret Gaultier’s archives through their own lenses. The results were compelling, but always temporary—a rotating stage without a central performer.

That era is now over. With Lantink’s appointment, Gaultier reclaims continuity.

The Return of Ready-to-Wear

Perhaps the most seismic implication of Lantink’s appointment is the revival of Jean Paul Gaultier’s ready-to-wear program, which had been dormant for more than a decade.

Scheduled to debut at Paris Fashion Week in September 2025, the first collection under Lantink’s direction will signal more than just a product line—it will set the tone for Gaultier’s place in a post-pandemic, post-fast-fashion industry.

The decision to return to ready-to-wear is not just nostalgic. It’s strategic. The mid-2020s have seen a massive shift in how consumers relate to fashion: the rise of resale, the boom of upcycling, the dominance of digitally native brands, and the reappraisal of artisanry. Lantink’s skillset, which thrives on reconfiguration and digital consciousness, is uniquely positioned to rebuild Gaultier’s commercial engine without compromising its legacy.

Expect pieces that remix archival references—such as the sailor stripes, corsetry, and streetwear hybrids—with modern construction techniques and a focus on ethical material sourcing. In other words, theatrical sustainability—done the Gaultier way.

What We Can Expect from Duran Lantink at JPG

Though his debut collection is still months away, Lantink’s past work offers some telling signals:

• Deconstruction as Identity: Lantink doesn’t just alter clothes—he explodes them. Expect cut-and-paste tailoring, asymmetrical silhouettes, and visibly stitched seams that emphasize process and imperfection as forms of expression.
• Gender Fluidity: Gaultier was one of the first designers to queer fashion on a global stage. Lantink is poised to continue that legacy, designing for bodies, not binaries.
• Provocative Casting: If the house’s past is any guide, and Lantink’s aesthetic holds true, expect diverse, radically inclusive casting—not just in race and gender, but in age, size, ability, and beyond.
• Archive Reinterpretation: Like his predecessors, Lantink will almost certainly riff on Gaultier’s most iconic collections—revisiting the Tattoo Mesh, Cone Bra, Les Marins, and Cyberbaba eras through his own fragmented, futuristic lens.
• Digital Interplay: Known for using augmented reality and 3D scanning in past presentations, Lantink may also bring JPG into a digitally immersive space—blurring physical and virtual, garment and graphic.

Couture: The Wild Frontier

Lantink’s first haute couture collection will debut in January 2026, aligning with the Spring/Summer 2026 schedule. This marks a significant moment, as couture is the ultimate stage for storytelling—and few modern designers know how to weave a conceptual narrative quite like Lantink.

But couture under Lantink will likely diverge from traditional silk-and-bead extravagance. His past work suggests a material insurgency—expect unconventional textiles, modular construction, and possibly repurposed materials elevated to couture level. Think: plastic bags that behave like organza, deconstructed sportswear transformed into gowns.

Given the house’s camp history and its founder’s love of the absurd, Lantink’s punk pragmatism could usher in a whole new genre of couture—one that’s rebellious, sustainable, and deeply theatrical.

Reactions and Ramifications

The appointment has been met with overwhelming industry intrigue, with many praising the maison’s decision to take a risk on a lesser-known name rather than default to a commercial giant.

Fashion critics see it as a commitment to innovation. “It’s a bold move,” said Vogue Runway editor Nicole Phelps. “Lantink isn’t afraid to tear things apart—literally and metaphorically—and that’s exactly what Gaultier’s legacy demands.”

Meanwhile, longtime fans of the house are eager to see a return to its more permanent structure. “The guest-designer era was fun, but I missed having a throughline,” said one Paris-based stylist. “Lantink might give us that—and take us somewhere wild.”

The industry will also be watching closely to see how Gaultier positions itself against a backdrop of younger houses—Marine Serre, Telfar, and Y/Project—that have turned boundary-pushing into business models.

Impression

Jean Paul Gaultier’s appointment of Duran Lantink isn’t just about reviving a dormant house—it’s about challenging the house to be dangerous again. In a luxury landscape often dominated by brand-safe minimalism, Gaultier’s re-entry under Lantink could reignite fashion’s performative, political, and playful potential.

For Lantink, the appointment is not just a validation of his subversive vision—it’s a call to arms. He’s not just being asked to design. He’s being asked to interpret legacy while inventing a future. And if his past work is any indication, it’s going to be a chaotic, beautiful, and utterly uncompromising ride.

As the world waits for September’s ready-to-wear debut and January’s couture launch, one thing is certain: Jean Paul Gaultier is no longer a museum piece. With Duran Lantink in the pilot seat, it’s a living, mutating, unapologetic force once again.

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