With two weeks to go until his first haute couture show for Jean Paul Gaultier, Duran Lantink took a Zoom break to discuss this pre-collection. It’s another first for the Dutch designer who shot to fashion fame with his avant-garde overstuffed silhouettes and has sent out a pair of ready-to-wear collections at JPG as irreverent and iconoclastic as anything that’s come down a Paris runway lately. “What I liked about doing this was we were really starting to think about what the wardrobe could be,” Lantink said.
In these pictures, the house signature cone bra made iconic by Madonna on her 1990 Blond Ambition tour, is worn by a male model with a skirt made from an upside-down jacket—note the lapels along its diagonal hem. De- and reconstructed tailoring is a recurring motif, as is trompe l’oeil. Inspired by Gaultier’s own experiments with the technique, Lantink printed jersey mesh with a blown-up gilet, scarf, and tie. Denim jackets and peacoats are likewise printed with medals and other military regalia, and jeans come with built-in underwear, not on the inside but the outside.
You couldn’t call any of that safe, per se, but it’s a long way from the hirsute nude male bodysuit of his first outing last September. “This was my first sort of exercise where I could translate it into a bit more softcore version. It’s a little bit less conceptual, more commercial,” Lantink said. A Harrington jacket cut voluminously in front and snatched in back, and another outerwear piece in navy nylon with flashes or orange that mashed up a bomber, a biker, and an army parka looked particularly customer friendly. Still, you get the sense that it’s experimentation he relishes most. A drop waist dress with exposed flashes of skin at the hips and a stretch knit jumper and dress in Pompiers’ black and red with infinity zippers (to be worn multiple ways) are playful in ways that feel very Gaultier.
