Many first heard the name Duran Lantink in 2018, when Janelle Monáe strutted across the screen in a pair of outrageous pink “vagina pants” in her Pynk music video. That pop culture moment – equal parts playful and provocative – was Lantink’s flap-enthused entrance onto the global stage. But it was only an introduction. In the years since, the 38-year-old Dutch designer has proven he’s far more than a one-hit wonder, emerging as one of fashion’s most visionary new talents. His mission: turning the industry’s castoffs and excess into something boldly, beautifully new.
An Upcycling Maverick with an Edge. Based between Amsterdam and Paris, Lantink has built his brand on what he calls a “collage” technique – splicing together luxury’s leftover pieces to create wholly original garments. Discarded Givenchy and Louis Vuitton coats might be “Frankensteined” into a single new jacket; a shopping bag gets sliced and reassembled with dual Gucci and Vuitton logos. Early on, he even crafted hybrid shoes from Dr. Martens soles and Dries Van Noten uppers, and combined fabrics from Céline, Marni, Valentino and Gucci into one eclectic coat. Lantink’s upcycled creations are textured, bold, and bright, with clashing prints and exaggerated proportions that somehow gel into a covetable whole. Crucially, they’re not just conceptual art pieces – they’re desirable fashion. “I don’t want to be too camp, but I like to play and flirt with [style]. My aim is simply to create exciting things that reflect my values,” Lantink has said. That ethos – joy and irreverence with an underlying purpose – sets him apart in the sustainability conversation.
This forward-thinking approach has earned Lantink a fast-growing fanbase. His one-of-a-kind designs have caught the eye of pop icons like Beyoncé and Billie Eilish, who have both donned custom Lantink creations. (Billie Eilish notably wore his work for a high-profile magazine cover in 2020.) Museums have taken notice too – pieces by Lantink now reside in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Victoria & Albert Museum, affirming their cultural significance. And industry insiders have given the ultimate nods of approval: Lantink was a finalist for the prestigious LVMH Prize in 2019, won the ANDAM Fashion Award’s Special Prize in 2023, and clinched the Karl Lagerfeld Prize (the LVMH Prize’s runner-up honor) in 2024. Not bad for a designer who launched his eponymous label just a few years ago, in 2019.
From Underground to the Runway. Early in his career, Lantink made a name with buzzy upcycling projects and capsule collections often outside the traditional fashion schedule. In one memorable pop-up with London boutique Browns, he invited clients to bring in their “garms of yesteryear” for him to transform on the spot, giving cherished old clothes a new life. He also teamed up with retailers to reinvent their deadstock – for example, creating an exclusive capsule for Browns from the store’s unsold luxury stock. These collaborative experiments, part art installation and part sustainable solution, established Lantink as a creative problem-solver unafraid to challenge fashion’s wasteful status quo.
It wasn’t until 2023 that Lantink decided to enter what he jokingly calls “the rat race” of the official fashion calendar. Fresh off his ANDAM win, he moved operations to Paris and prepared his first on-schedule runway show: Spring/Summer 2024 at Paris Fashion Week. “I used to think the traditional system wasn’t for me,” Lantink admitted at the time, reflecting on years spent doing things his own way. “But now, I feel confident that I want to enter the rat race, try producing my clothes and see what that would be like”. It was a leap of faith for a designer who had never mass-produced garments or sold via conventional wholesalers before. Yet the pivot paid off. By the fall of 2023, the Fédération de la Haute Couture et de la Mode had invited him onto the official Paris schedule, signaling that Lantink’s blend of upcycling and high design had a place at fashion’s top table.
His Paris debut, staged at the Palais de Tokyo, showed Lantink refining his vision without dulling its edge. The collection was 95% upcycled materials, but it wasn’t a rag-tag assortment of thrifted looks – it was cohesive, forward, even polished at times. Lantink sent out his signature showpieces: think surreal, padded silhouettes that balloon at the hips and shoulders, carving new shapes out of the human form. (One black minidress in particular, with a mushroom-like foam structure jutting from the torso, recalled the audacity of a classic Comme des Garçons runway provocation.) Those artful oddities had already landed in editorial spreads and on trend-setting celebrities like Hailey Bieber. But alongside them, Lantink introduced more grounded separates – sharp-shouldered blazers, upcycled denim, tailored coats – proving he could translate conceptual ideas into wearable clothes buyers could actually imagine in stores.
Critics noted that Lantink’s Spring 2024 lineup balanced spectacle and sellability in a savvy way. For example, he took the bulbous, curved forms he’d experimented with previously and reworked them into slightly toned-down iterations – a white sculptural bustier worn over slouchy trousers, or a puffed-up bolero paired with a sleek skirt – offering hints of his wild creativity in more accessible formats. “Rather than combining a trench coat with a bomber jacket [as in past upcycled one-offs], I’m studying used garments and thinking about how to make them my own identity,” he said of his evolving approach during this period. In practice, that meant learning how to streamline his “collages” without losing their soul. The result was a collection that impressed both avant-garde enthusiasts and traditional buyers. By the end of that Paris show, it was clear Lantink could hold his own in the epicenter of fashion – and bring fresh ideas to a system in need of them.
Culture, Commentary, and What’s Next. Lantink’s rise comes at a time when the fashion world is hungry for innovation in sustainability, and he delivers with a rebellious twist. In an era of earnest eco-branding and recycled basics, he offers a reminder that upcycled fashion can be daring, luxury-level, and even subversive. Each Lantink piece carries an implicit commentary on excess: the ghost of cast-off garments haunts the new design, cheekily poking at the idea of “newness” in an over-saturated market. At the same time, his work is anything but dour or preachy. There’s a sense of humor (sometimes literally woven in – those famous Pynk pants were a witty celebration of female empowerment) and a celebration of individuality. It tracks that Lantink grew up in a free-spirited environment, cutting up family clothes as a kid and finding joy in the process. To this day, he associates fashion with personal expression and freedom: “Joy is a form of acceptance, intrinsically linked to queerness,” he has said, hinting at how his own identity fuels his inclusive, anything-goes design philosophy.
All this has made Duran Lantink one of the most closely watched designers of his generation. In fact, the industry rumor mill is already swirling with speculation about his next move. Multiple reports have hinted that Jean Paul Gaultier – the legendary French house known for its irreverent spirit – has set its sights on Lantink for a creative director role. (The parallels are hard to ignore: both Gaultier and Lantink share an irreverent approach, a love of upending conventions, and an eye for upcycling – Gaultier famously turned thrift-store denim into couture in the ’90s, a path Lantink follows in his own 21st-century way.) As of now, neither Lantink nor Gaultier’s camp has confirmed the chatter, but even the suggestion speaks volumes. It underscores how far Lantink has come – from piecing together vintage scraps in Amsterdam to being talked about as the possible heir to one of Paris’s great fashion provocateurs – and how much his vision resonates with today’s cultural moment.
Wherever Duran Lantink goes next, he’s already shifted the conversation. In an industry obsessed with the new, Lantink shows that the future of fashion might just be hiding in its past – on the racks of unsold inventory, in the depths of our closets, waiting to be cut, spliced, and reinvented. By embracing what others discard and making it feel exciting and luxurious, Lantink has effectively flipped the script on sustainability. The hype around him is well-earned: he’s reminding us that high fashion can have a conscience without losing its cool. And as Lantink continues to remix and reimagine, the rest of the fashion world is eagerly watching – and catching on. In Duran Lantink’s hands, yesterday’s clothes become tomorrow’s visionary style, proving that innovation sometimes means looking backward to move forward.
