Jean Paul Gaultier Welcomes Duran Lantink as Its Creative Director

After an experimental cycle of collaborations entrusted to guest designers, the Jean Paul Gaultier fashion house is turning over a new leaf and entrusting the creative direction to Duran Lantink in a Tuesday morning announcement. He marks the first permanent appointee since the founder's farewell show in 2020.

"I consider Jean Paul Gaultier 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. Stepping into the role of creative director is a true honor," Lantink said in a statement. His first ready-to-wear collection is expected for the Paris Fashion Week in September 2025, while his debut in Haute Couture is scheduled for January 2026.

"To me, Gaultier represents the ultimate house of creative spirit and savoir-faire. It's provocative, and continuously pushing boundaries. It's the brand that brings together different disciplines around fashion to create cultural movements, changing the language of clothes and how we wear them in the streets," Lantink continued.

Born in Amsterdam in 1987, the designer made a name for himself with his subversive and sustainable approach, fusing archive materials and second-hand pieces into hybrid, edgy and conceptual creations. A graduate of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the Sandberg Instituut, he has built a trajectory that challenges the traditional logic of the industry, often questioning the concept of exclusion in fashion. His name emerged strongly in 2019, when he dressed trans model Hunter Schafer for Vogue, marking a turning point in the fashion imagery and inclusivity. His more recent shows, like his Fall/Winter 2025 catwalk, proved his know-how in creating beautiful garments and wielding social media attention.

Jean Paul Gaultier, who in the 1980s was nicknamed the “enfant terrible” of French fashion, has always used transgression as a tool to push the boundaries of elegance. From the introduction of men’s skirts to couture fetishism, his career has been marked by a radical but profoundly sartorial vision. It is precisely this tension between provocation and savoir-faire that ideally links Gaultier to Lantink. In his appointment statement, Gaultier expressed his enthusiasm with words that oscillate between affection and symbolic recognition: "I see in him the energy, the audacity and the playful spirit with which I began my journey: the new enfant terrible of fashion. Welcome, Duran."

At a time when many fashion houses are taking refuge in the predictability of heritage, Jean Paul Gaultier is still betting on the unpredictable. This choice marks a return to creative continuity, while maintaining the avant-garde spirit that has defined the visual vocabulary of the house since its inception.