Jean Paul Gaultier: Duran Lantink's First Couture Collection

Jean Paul Gaultier's guest-designer format has, since the house stopped producing ready-to-wear, turned every couture season into a fresh experiment and Duran Lantink's debut on 8 July continued that tradition.

Known for radical upcycling and gender-fluid construction techniques developed well outside the traditional couture atelier system, Lantink's appointment signalled the house's continued willingness to hand its archive to designers whose instincts sit some distance from classic haute couture. The result placed Gaultier alongside Manish Malhotra's debut later that evening as one of the week's clearest illustrations of how far the guest-designer model has stretched the definition of couture itself.