For Duran Lantick’s second collection in Paris, the Dutch designer played with proportion in all ways by adding bumps and humps for volume, and stripping down to nude on dresses.
The designer has never worked in-season before, so for the first time dove deep into the idea of spring-summer, resurfacing with references to flowers and the sea. He pulled from all over — lips and ships, whales and tails — into a fanciful collection.
Models were swimming, perhaps, with life jackets turned into parkas, or buoys as bikini tops. He homed in on the looks for quite the ride.
Tailored pieces such as blazers for men were oversize to epic proportions, with linebacker shoulders that would not be out of place on a football field. Then those shapes shifted again, liquifying into nothingness. The last look was completely sheer at the back, giving the photographers and audience quite the parting shot.
“It was really about my obsession for clothes and how sort of to create my own handwriting,” he said backstage after the show. “There is not really a message. The message is I’m trying to figure out my language, and my language is about experimenting.”
Reworking pieces and materials is not a concept for him, it’s the foundation of the brand. Lantink wants to transform textiles and develop a new way to see the body.
Ninety-five percent of the materials were deadstock — blazers were lined with leftovers from Balenciaga — and the pieces that were new were hand-knitted from wool. Other textiles were recycled.
The young designer is working to get some of the more practical pieces into production, and promises those key looks will happen soon. Stockists will follow shortly, too, he added.
Unfortunately the designer skipped sending out last looks, much to the crowd’s disappointment, because everyone wanted to take one more dip into his whimsical world.
