Duran Lantink’s influence can now be seen across fashion, with other designers picking up his foam padding techniques to create extremes of shape that reject convention. Lantink designs shoulderlines to rise up past the ears and adds protrusions to the front of the hips that are anatomically off‚ not to enhance an hourglass form, but to suggest a defiant new image of beauty.
Backstage he was talking about cosplay, freedom, and silhouette. “It really is important to start figuring out new things, and not really care about the rules too much,” he said. Adding to his repertoire of sloped shoulders and body-modification hip pads, he used metal bands which allowed him to create “floating” skirts that preceded their models by a few inches, trousers that poked out graphically at the waist, and NSFW assless jeans. We were in a Paris office midway through a renovation, its cubicles stacked with paperwork and manned by “employees” who provided the show’s ambient singing via lavalier mics.
“Bad taste” was another talking point; Lantink was attracted to materials like loud animal prints and louder camouflage. “I felt like it was a good moment to work on these combinations that I normally wouldn’t do,” he said. It was an eyebrow-raising comment given a recent report that he’s up for consideration at Jean Paul Gaultier, which is hiring a new creative director. The zebra stripes and camo were mixed in with “good taste” plaids and a Barbour jacket sourced at a market that had received Lantink’s exaggerated padding treatment. Its remarkable form looked believably wearable, not merely an avant-garde fashion experiment—though that could just be fashion finally catching up with him.
In the end, what people will probably talk about are the provocative first and last looks: Mica Argañaraz in a latex top designed to resemble a man’s well-muscled torso, and a male model by the name of Chandler in another latex top, this one with large, pendulous, bouncy breasts. Were they runway stunts designed to be viral hits or did Latink have something more provocative to say about gender roles? The answer may lie in how their wearers reacted to them. “We gave Chandler the surprise this morning, and he loved it,” Lantink reported. Let freedom ring.
