For the seventeenth collection featured in our On Our Radar: Special Edition Fall/Winter 2026 in Paris, the spotlight shifts slightly. This time, the radar isn’t tracking an emerging designer, but the electrifying new creative direction of a legendary house. With his second ready-to-wear outing for Jean Paul Gaultier, Duran Lantink pushes the brand’s rebellious DNA into a fresh, unpredictable orbit.
The runway unfolds like a cast of characters stepping out of different worlds: a detective, a cowboy, a raver, a steampunk rebel, a Fifth Avenue banker wrapped in razor-sharp tailoring. Femme fatales drift through the scene too, dishevelled yet magnetic — as if they’ve just slipped out of bed and straight into the spotlight. It’s fashion as theatre, a parade of personalities where elegance collides with disruption.
The starting point was a personal relic: a vintage mesh T-shirt owned by Lantink featuring the face of Marlene Dietrich. Few icons embodied contradiction like Dietrich — sensual yet severe, tender yet commanding. Her spirit threads through the collection, setting the tone for a world where opposites constantly flip. Masculine and feminine. Vintage and new. Underwear and outerwear. Tailoring and sportswear — all coexisting in classic Gaultier fashion.
Digging into the house archives, Lantink treats garments like actors ready for new roles. A gathered-waist pinstripe suit from the Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2016 collection Le Palace mutates into sculptural tailoring experiments. A cropped bomber first seen in the ’80s returns almost untouched, while Fair Isle knits from the ’90s are reborn as body-hugging layers. Elsewhere, rubber car tires become accessories, wooden puppets echo past runway theatrics, and pleated jersey dresses inject bounce and movement into the silhouette.
It’s a method that feels instinctively right for Lantink, whose career has been built on transformation — cutting apart existing garments and rebuilding them into something entirely new. That same fearless spirit now fuels the Gaultier universe.
Because if there’s one rule inside this house, it’s simple: nothing stays the same for long. And under Lantink, the game has only just begun.
