The Poetics of shapes and volumes in Jean Paul Gaultier's Couture 2027 Duran Lantik's debut collection is an ode to the brand's heritage and that of France as a whole
A contemplative journey through shapes, silhouettes and volumes that tells not only the unprecedented creative vision of Duran Lantink for the first Haute Couture FW26-27 collection by Jean Paul Gaultier, but also the legacy of a maison and its homeland, the Île-de-France. In a system that has gradually seemed to forget the magic and the dream of fashion, the new creative director brings to life a dialogue between the savoir-faire of haute couture, the tradition of historical forms and their reinterpretation through new technologies.
If fashion today increasingly seeks to draw closer to those who observe it, to those who covet its objects, it often finds its common ground in extreme formal synthesis, sacrificing everything that might seem uncomfortable, dysfunctional or simply removed from everyday life. Duran Lantink instead chooses the opposite path. «I prefer to interrogate the silhouette rather than the body. I want to challenge the garment itself, to push it to the very limits of its sculptural potential», he explains in the show notes.
Lantink's interest lies not in the body, but in what a garment can become when freed from the obligation of functionality. Those very silhouettes, those fabrics and materials – fashion's deception and, at the same time, its vice: revealing and concealing – become the terrain on which the new creative director surprises. The garments present themselves from the front as almost classical constructions, yet reveal their own architecture, their own exoskeleton, when viewed in profile. They shift again when seen at three-quarter angle or from behind, continually transforming depending on the point of view.
In an era of two-dimensionality, of images compressed onto the surface of a screen, the collection returns fashion to its most authentic nature: the three-dimensional. The pieces resist the camera lens, which is incapable of reducing them to a simple frontal image, inviting the viewer to discover their spatial complexity. Shoulders are amplified to reach almost unnatural volumes, collars and necklines project forward to become sculptural elements, while tournures and crinolines are freed from their respective historical functions: the former become tails resembling wasp stingers, the latter conduits from which cascades of tulle explode.
Corsets, padding and anatomical exaggerations continue to shape, and distort, both female and male silhouettes. In an age dominated by virality and speed, in which being seen and being recognised seems to have become the primary goal of the image, Duran Lantink restores to fashion the possibility of concealment. His forms are ambiguous, appearing to project beyond the body, reconstructing themselves upon their own shadow.
From this research emerge vestimentary architectures that evoke a distant past: the 18th century. An era that helped to shape not only the identity of France, but that of the entire fashion system. If the galleon of Jean Paul Gaultier had long seemed to be navigating a creative storm without a port in sight, with Lantink it finally finds a new course leading directly to the halls of Versailles, when fashion was still uncomfortable, monumental and spectacular. Not because it needed to be practical, but because it represented the power, the whims and the vices of the court, in stark contrast to a nation brought low by poverty.
The figure of Marie Antoinette permeates the entire collection in a subtle manner. Prints remain rare, allowing the forms to speak, but certain decorative motifs draw directly from the interiors of the Palace of Versailles. One gown echoes the rinceaux of the queen's Cabinet Doré, another reinterprets the floral embroideries of her bedchamber through the sablé technique, while Capri trousers reference the culotte of the habit à la française. Even the suivez-moi-jeune-homme ribbons adorning the hairstyles seem to extend the movement of the silhouettes like the passage of a royal procession. The footwear, too, developed from the ready-to-wear FW26-27 collection, engages in dialogue with the Siècle des Lumières through satins, historical colour tones and pied-de-chèvre heels, perceptually altering the proportions of the foot.
It is above all the echo of the court dress, however, that becomes central. Monumental, uncomfortable, seemingly impractical, these pieces claim precisely that dysfunctionality which today appears absurd. «Precisely. It is this dysfunction that I wanted to explore. Today, the absence of practicality feels almost absurd. Yet it allows me to place the search for form at the very heart of my creative process», the designer affirms.
The colour palette, too, contributes to building this imaginary world. Burgundy, a recurring colour throughout the history of Jean Paul Gaultier, becomes the starting point around which Bleu de Roy, menthe fraîche green, flamant pink and the delicate shades of cuisse de nymphe and cuisse de nymphe émue are developed: tones that, even in their names, evoke the fanciful lightness of Marie Antoinette's court.
While many details belong to a now distant time, it is heritage that represents the true heart of the collection. A symbolic architecture made up of rooms to explore, of codes to move through and lose oneself within, with the promise of still being surprised. Lantink revisits some of the defining signatures of the Jean Paul Gaultier universe: the corset, the tailored jacket, Aran knitwear, sculptural tailoring, tulle skirts and above all the iconic cone bra, freed from its traditional placement to migrate across the body, transforming into organic points and protrusions.
The reinterpretation of heritage also passes through the maison's archives. The chalk-stripe cloth from the Haute Couture FW02-03 collection Les Hussardes is transformed into a breastplate and a tailored suit, while a forgotten biker jacket is reconstructed as a patchwork, finding a second life on the runway. Even Le Mâle, the maison's signature fragrance, is reinterpreted through a bouquet of white lavender held beneath the bell of an enormous medallion.
Duran Lantink's collection represents the beginning of a dialogue: an exchange with the ateliers of Jean Paul Gaultier and with the couture artisans becomes a laboratory of experimentation, a place where different areas of expertise meet to give shape to possibilities still unexplored. It is precisely this alliance between heritage, technique and research that restores to Haute Couture its original function: not to chase the present, but to imagine what does not yet exist.
At a historical moment when fashion often seems to measure its own value by the speed of the image and its immediate legibility, Duran Lantink's debut chooses instead complexity. It restores to centre stage the time of construction, experimentation and wonder, reminding us that couture does not belong to the realm of functionality, but to that of imagination. It is there that, as the designer himself concludes, «the impossible becomes possible». And perhaps this is the most important promise of the new era of Jean Paul Gaultier: to make form not an exercise in style, but the place where the dream of fashion finally takes shape once more.
