New Gaultier?

Duran Lantink’s arrival at Jean Paul Gaultier reflects a sharp visual sensibility shaped by couture irreverence, subversive cuts, and a deep understanding of fashion as distortion and image-making.

Duran Lantink is inspired by Jean Paul Gaultier collections. For example, a model wore striped pants during the Duran Lantink Spring 2025 Ready-to-Wear show. These pants can be compared with the illusion prints Jean Paul Gaultier designed on his garments. Photo by Daniele Oberrauch / Gorunway.com, and made available via Vogue. © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.

In April 2025, Jean Paul Gaultier announced that Duran Lantink would be the next creative director. This appointment both shocked and delighted the industry. Since Gaultier’s retirement in 2020, designers like Simone Rocha, Ludovic de Saint Sernin, and Julien Dossena took turns at the couture helm. These collections infused the designers’ signature skills and the house’s iconic, striking image. Though alluring, and sometimes peculiar (like the cactus-esque spiked dress from Spring 2022), the fashion musical chairs needed to end.

The last seat went to Duran Lantink, a designer who is no stranger to the industry. He studied at the Amsterdam Fashion Institute then earned his master’s at the Sandberg Institute. In 2016, Lantink created his own label that embraced an unsettling type of sophistication. The details of his collections would later prove Lantink’s worthiness for the position. From pill-shaped bottoms to the ever-famous “vagina pants,” the writing was on the wall (and on the runway) to show where Lantink was headed. 

The cover for Janelle Monáe’s “PYNK” song that was released in 2018. Duran Lantink designed the otherworldly pants Monáe is wearing. Photo courtesy of Wondaland Arts Society and Atlantic Records, and made available via The FADER. © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.

In April 2018, singer Janelle Monáe released a song titled “PYNK.” In the music video, Monáe and their dancers moved throughout a desert in pink, velvet bodysuits. Yet, the internet’s reaction to the video focused solely on Monáe’s pants, which Duran Lantink designed. The properly titled “vagina pants” were created to embrace female sexuality. The pants, which recreate the vagina in a petal-like structure, seemingly represent a rebirth against the barren desert scene. 

These pants put Lantink into the online fashion spotlight. This garment went viral because of the social stigma surrounding female sexuality. These pants beautifully forced a conversation about the raw power women carry. Diving into the design of this garment, it was clear that Duran Lantink was the next designer to look out for. The 3D, inflatable shape of these pants both exaggerated and curved Monáe’s legs. The fabric, color scheme, and structure of the “vagina pants” show how talented and thoughtful Lanktink is with his designs. 

In the Duran Lantink Spring 2024 Ready-to-Wear collection, Lantink played with the meaning of shape and cut in his designs. Photos by Filippo Fior / Gorunway.com, and made available via Vogue. © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.

Anything Jean Paul Gaultier is extreme. From the Spring 2008 Couture fabric umbrellas, to the Fall 2024 Ready-to-Wear Union Jack dresses, it all spins and stuns audiences. Duran Lantink, with his inclination for the extreme, is perfect for the creative director role. Take his Spring 2024 Ready-to-Wear collection, for instance. Lantink designed with unique cuts and shapes to take his pieces to a new level. The structure of these garments is what made the collection pop.

Lantink presented two forms of the popular bubble dress: one with a rounded skirt and the other shooting out around the chest and hips. These proportions enlarged the models’ bodies, bringing them to a cartoonish-like state. Additionally, Lantink redesigned the hot pants and the bubble skirt in this collection. Unlike the rounded dresses, the skirts grew the models’ hips into a pill-tire shape. The “hot pants” were also circular at the edges and hung off the lower torso. Extremity with shape is something Lantink frequently embraces in his collections. 

The Duran Lantink Fall 2025 Ready-to-Wear collection blurred the lines of conventional shapes, ideas, and prints. Photos by Umberto Fratini / Gorunway.com, and made available via Vogue. © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.

Similarly, Duran Lantink’s effort towards conceptual design matches well with the legacy of Jean Paul Gaultier. The luxury French house is recognized globally for its campiness. The Spring 2015 Couture bridal wear and the Spring 2017 Couture floral pieces speak to this phenomenon. Overall, the most recent Duran Lantink collection, Fall 2025 Ready-to-Wear, shows similar campy elements in the designs. Specifically, the garments, with their unconventional shapes and patterns, brought his ideas to life. 

The looks mixed together patterns, which included (but were not limited to): Tartan, snakeskin, leopard, camo, knit, and zebra print. Like the perplexing striped pants from Jean Paul Gaultier, these pieces seemed simple at first, but created an illusion when added together. “Bubble” dresses reappeared, though the hot pants were left behind. The pants, however, stuck out like concrete around the models’ hips, maintaining a boxy shape as if they were frozen. The same radical thinking must’ve created the two perplexing knit dresses, where the stitching becomes its own creature, curving around the model’s lower torso. What’s more Jean Paul Gaultier than that?

Duran Lantink is the first permanent creative director of Jean Paul Gaultier since Gaultier’s retirement. The French house, founded in the 1980s, has a global, cult-like following. With his first collection arriving in September 2025, all eyes will be on Duran Lantink. Understanding that no one else could create better “vagina pants,” this writer is sure he will flourish in his new position.