Duran Lantink

Duran Lantink’s namesake label is built around radical sustainability, and in July he won the ANDAM Special Prize for it. But for his recent fashion show in Paris, the Dutch designer somehow managed to draw attention away from the now-expected deadstock-upcycled-repurposed talking points to make a new, confident statement. “At the moment I’m really experimenting, trying to find my handwriting,” he said backstage before the show. “I started with combining clothes and pieces, and now I am really thinking about shape.” For spring-summer 2024, he sent out pneumatic, bulbous silhouettes, from a curvaceous, artificially puffed-up sheath dress (a nod to Comme Des Garçons’ legendary “Lumps and Bumps” collection from 1997) to floating necklines, itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny “bubble jeans” bottoms, and tops resembling floating devices known in France as “frites”, though the show notes called them “tubular objects d’art.” A lifejacket was cleverly worked into a forest green bomber. A 19th century silk veil was paired with a traditional Dutch bonnet to become a sundress; a vintage macramé tablecloth got a similar treatment. Both were charming. Other hybrids included a cage dress made of a sliced black T-shirt, knit deadstock and a piece of a skirt worn over a white bubble top; an experiment in three-dimensionality, the designer explained. “Speedo-jeans” were another attempt at something new. Those starred the classic men’s swim briefs spliced with vintage jeans and hand-knitted leg warmers. Lantink’s focus is solidly on questioning our relationship to traditional clothing. The final number, a black hourglass cut-out dress with hook-like shoulders, was a case in point. Even before the designer revealed, post-show, that the Met Costume Institute, the V&A and the Stedelijk museum have all acquired his work for their permanent collections, this outing gave its audience plenty to think about.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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They say that fashion will never be 100% sustainable. A brand can do its best to keep things eco-friendly, but in the end, clothes are still being produced. But Duran Lantink‘s method proves the industry that there’s a revolutionary (and very witty) way of making fashion as wasteless as possible. His upcycling methods – repurposing unsold designer-label clothes in his pioneering, cheeky way – date back to 2013, but only now seem to fully resonate with a wider audience. Autumn-winter 2021 season is the designer’s first (of course digital) fashion show collection. “Basically, during lockdown, I had time to work with my assistant, Thibault, on all the materials I had left over from collaborations with stores and brands, and to come up with this, our first runway collection.” Thibault is in the show, wearing, in one of his exits, a swishing lemon yellow dress that is reconstructed from another dress which had been left over from Lantink’s collaboration with Ellery last year. The point was to give him free rein to recycle and give new life to their unsold inventory. Lantink pointed out to Vogue how he’s unpicked, restyled, and refashioned multiple piles of clothes lying around his studio which “used to be” garments by Balmain, Balenciaga, Prada, Proenza Schouler, Vetements, Marine Serre, and many more. “In the beginning, we started with stores to see how we could work with their deadstock to see how we could stop their clothes going into landfill. And that was the beginning of thinking how we could create a completely new form of business.” The collection is like an aethetical 2000s-style remix of sexy revealing, sparkle and sharp minimalism. There’s a zigzaggy sparkly dress – one breast out – remade from something unsold from Balmain, and naked illusion half-dresses sewn onto stretchy body pieces. A flash of a diamanté thong (made from recycled materials) is homage to Tom Ford’s Gucci 1997 moment, but with a Duran Lantink logo planted in the crucial place. Yet Lantink has also now come up with an ingenious plan for extending the buzzy fashion “moment” so that it can morph into potentially infinite new shapes for his followers. He announced the launch of a service on his new direct-to-wearer website. “When you’re fed up with something, you can click on two tabs. One, where you can resell. On the other, we will work with you to remake what you have to become whatever you like. So a coat can become a dress. A dress can become a shirt. A shirt can be trousers. Whatever you want!” People who are up for engaging with Lantink’s process are destined to be the happy recipients of fully documented online records of where their clothes originated, and how they’ve been altered over time: a personalized archive. That redefinition of being able to love and re-love clothes in a never-ending cycle restyled by a designer is something truly, truly innovative.