The Dutch designer balances the house's signature provocation with his most approachable collection yet for the Paris runway.
When Duran Lantink debuted at Jean Paul Gaultier one year ago, he sent out deliberately disorienting pieces: a padded, spherical take on the iconic cone bra, a tattooed bodysuit complete with startlingly realistic anatomical details. The collection demanded a second look. Now, returning to Paris Fashion Week with the house's spring/summer 2027 offering, Lantink has refined that experimental energy into his most wearable proposition for the brand to date.
The show opened with a crisp white coatdress, its shoulders dramatically extended, its sculpted lapel climbing into a collar that framed the face. This set the collection's terms: recognizable silhouettes pushed just past their familiar boundaries, a direct inheritance from Gaultier's own rule-breaking instincts.
Even straightforward pieces carried subtle distortions. Low-rise jeans, cut slim and fastened off-center, were styled with a backless halter top exploding in ruffles and lemon-yellow sandals. The house has historically avoided handbags, but under Lantink, footwear has become a growing category. Split-toe shoes recurred throughout the lineup in flat, heeled, and lace-up variations—evidence of the designer's styling instincts and his comprehensive vision for the house.
Body transformation remains central to the brand's identity, and Lantink explored this through precise tailoring: an hourglass blazer with a sharply defined waist, a trench coat revealing a bustier-like structure beneath, a tartan skirt suit with a contrasting inner collar. The anatomical references grew more explicit as the show progressed.
The cone bra—perhaps the house's most enduring contribution to fashion—appeared with relative restraint, integrated into cutout garments rather than celebrated as a standalone statement. Minidresses, maxi dresses, and denim shirts arrived with their midsections removed, the sculptural cups exposed as architectural details.
Other looks continued the interplay of structure and skin: a cropped dress shirt with a three-dimensional hem that hovered away from the body, a caged leather dress studded with metallic ornaments. Headpieces ranged from a sheer veil to a dramatic tiered construction.
On the runway, "wearable" can read as compromise. Here, it meant that even essential pieces contained some element of disruption, something deliberately not quite right. As Lantink understands, following Gaultier before him, clothing should provoke feeling—and still find its way into a closet.