Jean Paul Gaultier names Duran Lantink new permanent creative chief for RTW, couture

Jean Paul Gaultier is gearing up to make a bigger impact on both ready-to-wear and couture with owner Puig naming Duran Lantink as its permanent creative director.

The new creative chief’s first RTW collection for the label will be for SS26, showing in September. The equivalent couture collection will be shown in January.

It follows five years (since Gaultier himself retired in 2020) in which the brand been overseen by a series of sought-after guest designers, including Chitose Abe, Glenn Martens, Olivier Rousteing, and Simon Rocha, among others, and — most recently — Ludovic de Saint Sernin. 

They’ve added their own spin to the Gaultier look while also revisiting some of the brand’s past glories and that could be what we’ll see under Lantink too. But the key will be that there’s now a more unified approach between couture and RTW and from season to season.

Hailing the arrival of Lantink, Jean Paul Gaultier referenced what people had long said about his own work and approach, saying: “I see in him the energy, audacity and playful spirit through fashion that I had at the beginning of my own journey: the new enfant terrible of fashion. Welcome Duran.” 

And Lantink added that he sees Gaultier “as 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”.

He praised the label’s constant challenging of codes, pushing fashion’s boundaries and drawing on multiple cultural influences to redefine the way people wear clothes.

Gaultier’s biggest business is fragrance, which dwarfs the size of the fashion ops so it will be interesting to see how big Puig hopes Gaultier’s fashion will become as it prepare’s for the house’s 50th anniversary next year.

It’s been reported that Lantink’s own label will be paused, which is understandable given the size of the job he now has ahead of him.

So who is Duran Lantink? Born in 1988, the Dutch designer launched his own label in the last decade and was taken up by ‘cool’ celebrities, as well as winning multiple prestigious prizes. He won the Andam Special Prize in 2023 and the LVMH Prize’s Karl Lagerfeld Award a year later. He also won the Woolmark Prize only this month.

He’s fond of playing with gender norms and is known for his bold silhouettes, which stand out against the quiet luxury trend of recent years.