Duran Lantink was 15 when he hosted his first fashion show. He invited his closest family and friends down to the sandy beaches of Scheveningen, an area of the Hague in Netherlands where he grew up, to show a collection of one-of-a-kind skirts he designed. Years before words like upcycling or reworking were in his vocabulary, he cut up the waistbands from his stepfather’s old jeans and mashed them up with pleated panels made out of his grandmother’s tablecloths. The silhouette – a quintessentially Noughties schoolgirl kilt – made so much noise in his community that local concept store Roppa bought 40 of them as the perfect addition to its ravey offering from brands such as Cyberdog, W&Lt and Diesel. “A lot of my friends bought them… they actually sold out in 10 days,” Duran remembers fondly. Now in his early thirties, the Dutch designer continues to embody the same sentiment from his teenage debut: a pair of scissors without mercy, and a provocative mind that pushes against authority. Duran Lantink is literally taking apart and reconstructing the meaning of luxury fashion.

“With my collaborations, it was a lot about building things full and out into the space; mixing different patterns and fabrics. So this time, I was thinking about how we can explore the body in a more overtly sexual way,” he says. A big influence in the initial parts of the design process was the soundtrack that blasted in his studio, the most-played album was a mixtape released by iT Amsterdam, a cult club known for its outlandish queer parties back in the 1990s. On the cover of the album is the legendary Dutch drag queen Nicky Nicole, smiling ear-to-ear and (un)dressed in an Art Deco-inspired microdress. “There was just that old-school, intense house blasting in the workroom – we were really missing a good party.” The collection included frocks that revealed more than they concealed, and transparent mesh became a key component of the final look.

This retro-yet-current idea of sexiness was explored through the references to Tom Ford-era Gucci and his seminal spring/summer 1997 collection. A Swarovski-encrusted take on Ford’s logoed thongs, ignoring the question of good and bad taste, made an appearance in Duran’s show, in his first (and so far only) case of branding. While direct reappropriation isn’t usually part of his silhouettes, Duran admits this was probably a subconscious response to the wider trend of upcycling that has been taking over. “So many big brands are now repurposing their own deadstock. They can just pick it up and do it themselves, with huge amounts of money in shorter time periods… They’re not giving the younger designers an opportunity to own the process.”

Proving he pushes boundaries in more than just one way, Duran presented the collection through a digital experience that prioritised drones over an IRL front row. Twenty flying cameras hovered between the models as they walked through the haunted halls of Soestdijk Palace, the former residence of Queen Juliana and Prince Bernard. Duran felt this historic venue perfectly embodied the absurdity of his designs. “I really liked the idea of sexy dresses and all the nakedness roaming around the former bedroom of the prince and walking around the former bathroom of the queen.” On the day of the launch, Duran released video content via Instagram bot accounts that tagged various editors and influencers, allowing them to repost and replicate the coverage of a physical show. “There are a lot of people that watch the shows just to see which editors and celebrities are there. So I was thinking about how to replace them and figure out whether it would be possible. Obviously, no editors flying in is just so much better for the environment.”

Paying homage to the digital nature of the show, Duran also remotely worked with legendary stylist Patti Wilson on building the looks for the collection. The two first met during the LVMH Prize semifinals in 2019 when he was shortlisted, and he knew he wanted to have her on board for a collection that nodded to the glossy quality of true glamour. “It was really helpful because I had never done a full collection. This meant I never considered what it means to have a look number one and how it has to be related to the look number 16. But now I discovered that if you have a line-up, you kind of need that,” he says, adding: “You want to have that full fashion experience? You go to Patti Wilson!”

This collection marks Duran’s first time working with bolts of fabrics instead of solely focusing on pre-existing garments. Metallic silver and gold pieces showcase his take on wardrobe classics including the trenchcoat, button-up shirt, pleated skirt and gown. However, the fabrics were sourced from a supplier who couldn’t sell them due to a production fault of a line going through it. “I was watching the Halston series, which showed the designer spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on test fabrics… Things haven’t changed much since then, I guess,” he laughs. Like the rest of the collection, these pieces will be dropping intermittently via Duran’s own e-commerce platform (Duranlantink.com), but will be available in editions of 10 and 50. To avoid excess, these will only be made to order.

Going forward, Duran feels like there is definitely a place for these personal collections in his work. Shown either once or twice a year, they will allow him to play without any constraints but the ones he sets himself. “Somehow, I never used to really like boundaries, but now I’m sort of digging it,” he jokes. But when it comes to the designs, it’s always about what’s next. He is currently working on his second collection for Browns Fashion and is in the middle of organising a live fashion event at the Hermitage museum in Amsterdam with Theater LeBelle, a local theatre workshop for people with intellectual disabilities. “We are rebuilding Andy Warhol’s Factory, but with all the people from the group as the superstars of the Factory, including Holly Woodlawn, Ultra Violet and Warhol himself.” This will be a showcase of a workshop the designer hosts in his studio every Monday with members of the theatre company exploring the medium of fashion.

He also hopes to make 3D printed shoes out of plastic ocean waste. That’s the thing with Duran Lantink – just as you’d thought you’d got your head around what he does, he turns a corner and kicks into top gear. Where to next? Who knows, but it sure will be a fun ride.

While there’s a plethora of designers today who work with deadstock fabrics or deconstruct existing garments, Duran’s path in the industry is unique in the way that he approaches his business. He detests the idea of running a label and instead centres his practice around working with other brands and stores on concepts that give new life to their old stock. “I’m privileged and fortunate that I started out by being sustainable. For that reason, it’s important for me to stay true to who I am and always have it in my company,” he says.

After attending some of the most prestigious Dutch art schools, including the Amsterdam Fashion Institute and Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Duran focused on his roots during an MA programme at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. Instead of creating new objects from scratch, his final collection was a line-up of digital hybrids made from some of the hottest seasonal pieces he patchworked in Photoshop out of his extensive archive of e-commerce imagery. Some of the teachers and colleagues disapproved of this technique, but Duran didn’t falter. His personal mission was to question conventions and give new value to garments that were otherwise going on sale. Long before Alessandro Michele and Demna Gvasalia collaboratively birthed Gucciaga, Duran cut up some Nike Air Max trainers and attached their bouncy sole to a pair of MiuMiu platforms. Solange Knowles even wore these one-of-a-kind hybrids as they evolved into a design synonymous with his visual language.

Over the past few years, Duran has crafted collections with shopping institutions like Browns Fashion and Joyce Hong Kong. For his collaboration with Batavia Stad, a Dutch outlet village, he created a physical show at Amsterdam Fashion Week that included a model walking down the catwalk with McDonald’s food and packaging glued to his chest.
It’s this tongue-in-cheek sense of humour mixed with blunt commentary on consumerism and the psychology of desire that results in an established signature, applied to everything Duran does. Regardless of his resources, the final outcome is always recognisably his, even if none of the garments carry a label with his name.

This notion is best on display in his partnership with Ellery, the Paris-based It-girl label founded by Aussie designer Kym Ellery. In place of the brand’s spring/summer 2021 collection, Ellery worked with Duran on crafting a new vision out of 150 garments from the brand’s archive. “I discovered his work through a friend, and I immediately loved what he was doing. It’s exactly what the fashion world needs right now because he finds a way to breathe a second life into past garments. Especially in the case of deadstock – which can carry negative energy – Duran transforms it into something completely positive,” Kym notes.

Like many other creative minds, Duran used the turmoil of a global pandemic as an opportunity to push his output further. With several of his collaborations postponed, he finally had a moment to look back on his own past work. “There was so much stuff lying around the studio from the previous projects, so I thought let’s just do something with it. We experimented without really knowing where to go. Then we started thinking and making, and it all ended up being about nakedness,” he explains. It was his most personal outing since those denim and tartan skirts paraded down the beach. This May, Duran presented his first comprehensive solo collection via a digital fashion show. Without a name, a gender or a season, it was officially classified as “springsummerautumnwinter”. And so Duran started the next chapter in his story.