Duran Lantink is among a handful of young designers who are coming in with a bang. The first signs emerged just pre-pandemic, with those trousers for Janelle Monaé’s “Pynk” video. A few months back, Lantink turned heads again with a couple of shiny coats, on Beyoncé (gold, for that Tiffany ad) and Lizzo (silver).
Last month, he made the big leap to high fashion’s epicenter, moving into a “really tiny” apartment in a really tony Paris arrondissement. That shift put the 35 year-old Dutch designer in mind of the accoutrements of moving house, from prosaic considerations like backpacks, doormats and car mats to existential ones like what you should keep and what could use a rethink.
Lantink’s Paris debut for fall was also his first IRL show, which forced the designer to channel his million-ideas-a-minute ways—hence the guided meditation soundtrack and incense—and let guests see his process up close. Turns out that was key, because there was a lot going on in back, where thick backpack straps became belts and fastenings. That car mat? Lantink wrapped it into a bodice. Khaki trousers sourced from surplus in Amsterdam became the midriff on a halter dress with a pleated neck and skirt. Buttery shearling, worked into plush coats or boots, was also deadstock from back home.
Experimental ideas included “mushroomy” shoulders, or a beige calico coat that the designer hung in the Hermitage museum a year ago and invited visitors to decorate themselves. An exaggerated hourglass trench sprang from using digital technology to liquefy the shape, the said Lantink, but the result seemed to land a comment about body positivity while simultaneously needling iconic brands in London, Paris, and Tokyo.
It’s always fun to be in on a joke, but Lantink also makes as convincing a case as anyone for the commercial appeal of repurposing, something he’s been doing since he was 12-years-old. (His first “show,” at 15, involved his grandmother’s pleated skirt, one of her tablecloths, and an old pair of his father’s Diesel jeans.) Here, a gold dress from his first collection was reborn as a corset. A coat was made of no less than five vintage bomber jackets. The last dress alone, pieced together from his mother’s Prada jacket, a vintage Miu Miu dress and a top donated by fellow designer Kim Ellery, shows why Lantink has caught the attention of stores like H. Lorenzo, Joyce Hong Kong, Concrete, and the rest of the industry, too.
