Jean Paul Gaultier Fall 2026 Is Duran Lantink’s Ode to the Masculin-Féminin
The designer was inspired by Marlene Dietrich’s gender-bending style—and outer space—at Paris Fashion Week.
Last season, in his debut as Jean Paul Gautier’s successor, Duran Lantink set the Internet on fire. Elegant, peculiar shapes and triumphantly hairy, full-nude bodysuits were, without debate, the most transgressive garments we’d seen on the Paris stage in some time. Many were shocked and even disgusted. Not Gaultier himself—who, at 73, cried tears of joy, saying he saw his younger self in Lantink’s ethos and execution.
The brand’s fall 2026 show on May 8 in Paris picked up where Lantink left off. The designer said this collection started with Marlene Dietrich and her feminine-masculinity. The first looks experimented with tailoring and form, paying homage to Dietrich through subversions of 1930s-inflected suiting. An elongated navy blazer saw the collar turned upside down (the neck sat at the belly button); a billowing wool skirt was cut to the crouch and paired with a bomber-suitvest hybrid. A pinstripe shirt came with a full pinstripe look: slim-cut pinstripe trousers with pinstripe overlain underwear and pinstripe stirrups holding pinstripe pant legs. Vintage lingerie met cowboy standards. Models wore black cowboys hats—one such hat had a hood extending from the back, giving it an otherworldly feel. Like Gaultier (and Margiela, who first moved to Paris to assist Gaultier in 1984), Lantink puts deconstruction front and center. A work (wo)man’s suit can have many meanings in this house.
After the suits and cowboys came the dolls, then the eveningwear aliens. Two screen-printed wooden dolls looked like they were on their way to the cosmos, dressed in white-lingerie spacesuits. Two full knit bodysuits mimicked the aforementioned pinstripe and screen print offerings. The message was clear: these garments are ready for adventure.
As the show progressed, a red pleated gown had shoulders straight out of Ridley Scott’s Alien. A black pleated top, apt for the red carpet, felt like a meld between a Flamenco dancer’s uniform and a far-off cowboy. Black jeans with cutouts at the hips were held together with a gold belt reading “Junior.” Alex Consani wore a black mesh dress with an image of Dietrich exhaling a cigarette; smoke trailed around the dress.
The clothes were exciting, packed with ideas that called to Gaultier’s history and Lantink’s bold subversions. In an era of minimal dressing, these looks ask: who is fashion for, and what do we see as its purpose? Is it about aspiration and class wars, or can it mean something else entirely? Lantink’s Gaultier is a rejection of conservative codes, right when we need it most.
