In his fourth ready-to-wear collection for the house, Lantink finally built clothes a customer could buy. The construction has never been better. The humor that makes Gaultier Gaultier has gone missing
PARIS — Duran Lantink showed his fourth ready-to-wear collection for Jean Paul Gaultier at 8 p.m. Sunday at the Palais de Tokyo, in a room lined with mirrors, under the title “Multidimensionality.” A year on from the debut that made him the first permanent creative director since Gaultier stopped showing in 2020, the clothes have stopped arguing about whether Lantink belongs at the house.
They have started arguing about whether anyone will wear them. That is progress, and it costs something. This was the most constructed collection of his tenure and the least funny.
The Mirrors Explained What the Tailoring Already Did
Lantink built the staging around a single preference. “I like the three-quarter [view] better than the side or the front,” he said in a pre-show interview, and the mirrors multiplied the angles accordingly. The clothes did not need the help. An hourglass blazer that read as conventional head-on turned into a jutting structure in profile; collars were pushed forward off the neck, and several jackets carried a porthole opening cut at the chest.
That is the collection’s real achievement and its first problem. The pattern cutting already made the argument about multiple viewpoints; the mirrors restated it. A show that has to annotate its own tailoring is a show whose designer does not yet trust the tailoring to land on its own.
Dutch Folklore Arrives as Print, Not Structure
The season’s new reference set came in flat. Checks, tartans, and florals drawn from traditional Dutch dress kept their graphic character, with the colors sharpened and carried on tartan skirt suits, cropped shirting, and denim, and Lantink described the mood as a witchy nod to 1980s Ibiza.
Almost none of it made it into the construction. The folklore ran as a surface pattern while the invention happened in the seams, leaving two systems operating in parallel rather than in conversation. The house’s strongest appropriations have historically been cut into the garment, not printed onto it, and a reference that can be swapped for another print next season is not yet a house code.
The Cone Bra Is Being Spent as Trim
Gaultier’s conical bra recurred throughout, flashing through chest openings as part of the wider wardrobe rather than an event. Lantink said the same openings could be filled instead with T-shirts carrying Junior Gaultier graphics — a sales option stated out loud, in the run-of-show.
Demoting the archive’s most legible asset to detailing is a defensible long-term position. Doing it before a replacement signature exists is the risk. The debut turned the cone into a padded bodysuit, which was an idea; here it functions closer to hardware.
Split-Toe Shoes Carry the Commercial Case
The most repeatable things in the collection were the smallest. Split-toe shoes supplied the one surreal intervention that a conventional outfit could absorb, and the square neckline Lantink worked in denim at couture reappeared on a mackintosh and a bomber jacket – the first detail of his tenure that reads as a code under construction rather than a one-season gesture.
It is also the narrowest commercial read the house has offered in four outings. The resort collection shown in June was looser, odder and more obviously salable. On the runway, Lantink pursued the experimental register so seriously that the clothes lost the hedonism the founder treated as a core competency.
Puig Needs a Wardrobe, Not a Headline
The timing of a more wearable collection is not accidental. Jean Paul Gaultier is rebuilding its ready-to-wear business behind an expanded product offer that includes footwear, plus a Galeries Lafayette pop-up. At parent Puig, the fragrance and fashion segment generated 1.72 billion euros in net revenue in the first half of 2026, up 3.8 percent on a like-for-like basis and 73 percent of group net revenue; group net profit attributable to the parent fell 4.4 percent to 263 million euros on transaction-related costs and an unfavorable comparison with extraordinary income a year earlier. Puig does not break out Gaultier fashion separately, and the half-year results say nothing about what the ready-to-wear contributes. Chief executive officer Jose Manuel Albesa, in the role since March, inherits that question along with a fashion house whose name still sells fragrance faster than it sells clothes.
Gaultier himself watched from the audience. Lantink has solved the harder problem first: the pattern cutting here is the strongest case he has made for himself since arriving. The founder’s clothes were never only well made. They were funny, and the joke was load-bearing.
See the complete collection below:
Images courtesy of Jean Paul Gaultier
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