Second time’s the charm for Duran Lantink at Jean Paul Gaultier.
After his poorly received debut as creative director, garnering reactions ranging from lukewarm to downright vitriolic ire in some quarters of fashion, his sophomore effort for the Puig-owned French house was under heightened scrutiny.
And as one editor said after Sunday’s show, the designer sure stuck it to the naysayers with his shapely tailored fall lineup.
In a preview, Lantink told WWD that the collection had started with a conversation with the retired namesake couturier, who regaled his successor with an anecdote of finding a tailored jacket in a market.
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Long story short, the idea of “madame masculinity” proved to be one of many fecund directions Lantink explored in a succession of compelling collisions of classic suits, lingerie, ski gear and Western — not all at the same time — pushing body proportions just enough to make things interesting.
Opening the show was a suit and overcoat with shoulders and cinched waist curving downward that exemplified Lantink’s idiosyncratic handwriting while also hitting the gender-ambiguous tailoring subtext of the fall.
Throughout, there were raised shoulders, sometimes floating a full handspan from the body underneath; jutting breasts and shapely derrières abstracted to an S-shaped outline, and orbiting ringed structures were placed anywhere between the neck and the upper thigh.
Lantink’s impish impulses were not completely silenced. A skirt made of a coat’s displaced collarline curved so high it revealed apex of the thighs, but the underlying shirt’s visible front tail was stragically placed.
Elsewhere, an infusion of winter sports yielded smart trousers with geometric colorblocking on the legs; formfitting dresses and skirts with futuristic flair that was later echoed in dramatic sci-fi-worthy evening gowns, and also pretty cool knit bodysuits in Fair Isle-adjacent motifs. For pumps, he imagined an off-kilter design based on a broken heel.
Better dosed, this effort built back the design credibility garnered under his own name.
Now starts the task of showing he’s able to finesse and sustain a balance between what he wants his version of Gaultier to be and the weight of the mantle he picked up — provocateur couture predecessor, perfume business and all.