Duran Lantink sharpens the aim for Jean Paul Gaultier SS27 The Dutch designer chose to be less conceptual, but still fun

The best thing a creative director can do in 2026 is to be different from the average — in a sartorial, creative, or storytelling sense. In a herd of brands and Maisons, of merch and pop-ups too similar to one another to so frequently call themselves "iconic," it is always the black sheep that causes a stir. And Duran Lantink, the first true creative director of Jean Paul Gaultier since the brand's founder left the atelier — entrusting the collections first to guest designers and then to the Dutch designer — knows exactly how to get noticed.

For SS27, Lantink continues to bring ironic collections to the runway, but the humor is more restrained than usual. Where previous collections included more costumes than clothes, more editorial masks than commercial pieces — think, for instance, of the realistic bodice or the Couture with its decidedly anti-functional silhouettes — for SS27 the creative director has kept his feet on the ground. Surrealism is still present, of course, but what took center stage in this show was primarily the savoir-faire of the brand's tailoring team.

The show opened with a series of pristine, plastic-looking white coats. These were followed by bodysuits and jackets in black and brown leather, then dresses and tops with voluminous white ruffles. References to Jean Paul Gaultier's heritage emerge transparently — bullet bras reimagined as leather horns, a kilt worn by a male model, and graphic details on sweatshirts and jackets that draw on the esoteric imagery so often explored by fashion's enfant terrible. Here, the embroidered red stars might evoke a Tyrolean aesthetic, or at most the pentacle of the five elements.

Lantink's study of the body continues, simply scaled back into pieces that are less conceptual and more practical — bombers, skirts, shirts, cardigans. The three-dimensionality is romantic, expressed through embroidered bodysuits that lift away from the body as if by magic, stiff skirts slashed at the front, and figure-hugging dresses that fray at the hems, revealing the navel while covering the head entirely.

It is the final look — a dark navy waistcoat and pencil skirt ensemble adorned with what appears to be an embroidered belt — that lends the show a certain elegance. Punctuated, in true Lantink-Gaultier fashion, by a hat topped with circular forms stacked into a small turret.