Jean Paul Gaultier Spring/Summer 2026 / SS26 at Paris Fashion Week

Duran Lantink’s debut collection for Jean Paul Gaultier is called “JUNIOR”. A nod, of course, to the cult Junior Gaultier line of 1988–1994: the rowdy, youthful, club-soaked offshoot that first hooked Lantink on the house of Jean Paul Gaultier and still makes him think of fashion as freedom.

For its ready-to-wear Spring/Summer 2026 / SS26 collection, Lantink leans on his gut sense of what Jean Paul Gaultier means today: fun, energetic, modern, urgent, alive. Through months of Duranification, pieces are made, fitted, twisted, played with, reinven It’s a process where creations magically happen or naturally disappear again.

Founded on overlapping principles of distorting the familiar, twisting references and embracing surprise, the voices of the founder and his successor often meet. Marinière stripes appear as optical illusions. Dysmorphic play sends skirts flying and shoulders vanishing. The class tattoo-on-mesh is inflated into 3D. Glittering trompe l’oeil bodies, the human anatomy print across torsos. Burgundy, mustard yellow, sky blue, grey – an unmistakable Gaultier palette. Dazzling jewellery. The result is both a resurrection of Jean Paul Gaultier’s ready-to-wear, and the creative extension of Duran Lantink’s run of five acclaimed Paris shows, def by radical volumes and disruptive silhouettes. The foundations are clearly there; new ideas come in abundance.

“I don’t do moodboards,” Lantink says. But there is one reference book in the mix: ‘Het RoXY Archief, 1988–1999’, a leafy tome by Dutch photographer Cleo Campert, chronicling Amsterdam’s legendary club that shaped an era of hedonism. RoXY was sweaty, debaucherous, anarchic, stylish in the most careless way. (Mr. Gaultier himself was an occasional RoXY guest, unlike Duran, who was 11 years old when the venue burned down. The sensation stuck.) A special mention goes to John Giorno, the American poet, activist and artist (1936–2019), whose hypnotic recordings often serve as a meditative soundtrack for Lantink at work.

“It’s like being transported into someone else’s thought process. I love it,” he says. Giorno’s groundbreaking legacy lives on through his Dial-a-Poem phone line and, of course, in the JUNIOR show soundtrack.

Jean Paul Gaultier JUNIOR collection for Ready-to-wear SS26 / Spring/Summer 2026 was presented inside the basement of Musée du Quai Branly, the Parisian museum dedicated to global cultures. History nearby if not literally visible; a memory trigger. Lantink likens it to catching a whiff of Le Male on your bed pillow – the giddy reminder of what happened last night. It’s not called JUNIOR for nothing. It’s a new heartbeat, a new starting point and a new freedom. Thank you for joining.

In Jean Paul Gaultier SS26 / Spring/Summer 2026 ready-to-wear, creative director Duran Lantink unleashes a wild fantasia that flirts with gender, anatomy, and audacity. The show pulses with pieces that feel more like provocations than garments — think printed “male genetic” motifs inked across sheer leggings or bodysuit canvases, and see-through embroidery dragons twisting across stocking-bodies, defying modesty and expectation. These designs don’t merely cover the body — they draw attention to it, amplifying the erotic, the grotesque, and the mythic all at once. It’s fashion as both self-portrait and manifesto, one that insists on blurring the line between tapestry and flesh.

All images Jean Paul Gaultier SS26 / Spring/Summer 2026 ready-to-wear by the brand. Credit to: Creative Direction Duran Lantink, Styling Jodie Barnes, Casting Piergiorgio Del Moro / DM Casting, Image Jop Van Bennekom, Words Gert Jonkers, Sound design Frédéric Sanchez, Hair Holli Smith, Makeup Thomas de Kluyver with BYREDO, Nails Lora De Sousa with Kure Bazaar, Show production Kitty Events, PR Lucien Pagès Communication, Show film & First looks directed by Formats and Mechanis, produced by Bureau Future, Backstage photography Juergen Teller with creative partner Dovile Drizyte, Runway Photography Yannis Vlamos, Front-of-house Photography Raphaël Chatelain.