Jean Paul Gaultier Appoints Fashion’s New Enfant Terrible
Half a decade after retiring from his eponymous brand, Jean Paul Gaultier has found his successor.
Duran Lantink, fresh from winning the Woolmark Prize only two weeks prior, has been announced as the creative director for Jean Paul Gaultier.
“I see in him the energy, the daring and the playful spirit in fashion that I had at the beginning of my own journey; the new enfant terrible in fashion. Welcome, Duran,” said Jean Paul Gaultier in a statement.
Quite the seal of approval to get from the enfant terrible of fashion. Mr. Gaultier is officially passing on the torch.
Lantink’s debut for the brand will be in September when he presents Jean Paul Gaultier’s first ready-to-wear collection in over a decade. Then, in January 2026, he will present his first couture collection, marking the end of JPG’s guest creative director strategy.
After Jean Paul Gaultier presented his final haute couture show in January 2020, it introduced a never-seen-before approach where a series of guest creative directors temporarily took the helm of the brand for a single haute couture show. The series saw designers such as Glenn Martens, current creative director of Diesel and Maison Margiela, as well as Haider Ackermann, newly appointed at Tom Ford, take the reigns of the brand for one show only.
Lantink becomes the brand’s first full-time creative director since the retirement of its namesake founder.
“To me, Gaultier represents the ultimate house of creative spirit and savoir faire. It’s provocative and continuously pushing boundaries,” says Lantink in a statement. It is likely those qualities — being provocative and boundary pushing — that makes Gaultier see a bit of himself in the Dutch designer.
The Duran Lantink Fall 2025 show became one of the most talked about from Paris Fashion Week last season, largely thanks to its opening and closing looks: Female model Mica Argañaraz started proceedings wearing a muscular prosthetic male chest while male model Chandler Frye closed things off wearing prosthetic breasts. In the 51 looks between these prosthetic-wielding looks, his signature foam padding technique created sculptural shapes and a bevvy of clashing prints (snakeskin, camo, zebra… all in one look!) were presented. Although, naturally, it was videos of the prosthetic breasts bouncing down the runway that made the most social media impact.
It’s not the first time Lantink has pulled such a stunt: He went similarly viral in 2018 for his vagina pants worn by singer Janelle Monáe. This ability to cause a stir is a direct parallel with Jean Paul Gaultier (he wasn’t nicknamed the enfant terrible for nothing!), who shocked the Parisian fashion industry through men wearing skirts and trompe l’œil that mimicked nude bodies.
But, just as is the case with Jean Paul Gaultier, there’s much more to Lantink than pure provocation. It’s his inventive proportions and his surrealist experimentation that have landed him critical acclaim (before this year’s Woolmark prize win, he was awarded LVMH’s 2024 Karl Lagerfeld prize and the Andam Special Prize in 2023).
"I think now more than ever, it’s important to be a bit more radical. Because if we’re not being radical, then what are we doing?” Lantink said in his speech after winning the Woolmark Prize. Now, he is heading up one of the most radical fashion brands in history.
