In Duran Lantink’s Amsterdam studio, a running joke reoccurs whenever the Dutch designer describes his clothes as “commercial.” “You can’t imagine how many disapproving looks I get when I say something is commercial,” Lantink says. “It’s become my motto… and people think I’m crazy.”
The conclusion is that LantinkByrne’s clothes, which tend toward the avant-garde, are often hard to sell. He is best known for skirts, tops and sweetheart-neck dresses that billow like life jackets, and for looser constructions, which he calls “shapes,” that transform the wearer. One recent creation, a gray double-breasted jacket with a structure that accentuates the shoulders, could transform anyone into David Byrne.
While his subversive designs don’t yet satisfy everyone’s tastes, his brand has generated quite a stir in the industry: his garments have graced the covers of countless magazines and been worn by Beyoncé, Doja Cat and Janelle Monáe, for whom he created the “vagina” pants in the singer’s 2018 music video for “Pynk.” Last year, he was awarded the ANDAM Special Prize, and on September 10, he was announced as the second-place winner of the Karl Lagerfeld Special Jury Prize for the 2024 LVMH Prize.
Stylists love his designs. “I am drawn to the structural elements of his clothes, which push the boundaries of traditional fashion,” says Jodie Barnes, who works with Lantink on his shows. “I love that he continually questions the silhouette and strives to refine his shapes while introducing new elements each season.”
Lantink, a cherub-faced 36-year-old, was born and raised in The Hague but moved to Amsterdam to study at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in 2010. He made his first fashion collection in 2016, in collaboration with his photographer friend Jan Hoek and a community of transgender sex workers in Cape Town; it featured a patchwork of fabrics, prints and techniques, and lots of ruffles and tulle.
His early work focused “It’s like seeing a nice jacket and imagining what a pair of pants could look like,” Lantink says. “For me, it’s always been a very natural way of working, because as a child I was obsessed with the shape of clothes, but not with flat fabrics. So I started transforming clothes at an early age and that became my way of writing and the way of communicating what I like.”
Lantink had no intention of recycling in the way the fashion industry does now – it was just a practical, sustainable coincidence. “It wasn’t a conscious choice nor did I want to make the world a better place. At the same time, I was always saddened to see pieces lying around in a charity shop, unworn. Then, at art school, I started to see fast fashion and the amount of overproduction by big brands, and I thought about what I could do not just with vintage pieces but also with dead stock.”
He has worked with retailers such as Browns, Leclaireur and H Lorenzo, as well as fashion brands such as Elleryby cutting up its unsold goods and re-stitching them into one-of-a-kind pieces. One design, from July 2021, Frankensteined a pair of 1017 ALYX 9SM vinyl pants and a vintage Burberry trench coat into rodeo-style trousers. A jacket from the same year was fashioned from a Prada wool coat, vintage Oscar Suleyman rabbit fur pants, and a Louis Vuitton canvas. Another minidress, made from the same stash of LV-monogrammed fabric, is now preserved in the Met’s collection.
“It was really nice to combine brands that aren’t supposed to be combined, like Chanel with Dior, because it breaks the boundaries of what you can and can’t do,” says Lantink. “It was also a reflection of what people were wearing on the streets at the time – you would never see someone fully dressed in Louis Vuitton or Alaïa. So it seemed logical to merge all these different brands.”
Lantink kept working this way until stores no longer gave him stock. Then, he changed course. His brand debuted at Paris Fashion Week in 2023 with a ready-to-wear collection that still used stock fabrics, recycled cotton and old jeans, but was made in a way that didn’t rely on old luxury items. Here, he presented his “bubble” designs that were a reinvention of wardrobe staples, rather than clothes to transform the body.
“Unlike Rei Kawakubo of Like the Garçons“My lumps and bumps, whose lumps and bumps were meant to change the perspective of the body, mine are about transforming a classic,” Lantink says. “Like changing the shape of a denim jacket or a button-down shirt.”
The launch of her ready-to-wear has also sparked conversation about how to make her designs more marketable and her business more viable in the long term. Her fall-winter 2024 collection is more restrained than her previous work, but still includes subtle nods to her signature shapes. She’s also establishing recurring staple designs, such as “floating” styles — jeans, skirts and T-shirts that have a simple transparent panel sewn into them, suggesting a hint of deconstructionism. Lantink is also considering accessories — shoes, bags and sunglasses — to diversify the business.
“We are doing well financially now, we have six-figure revenues, but we want to get to seven figures, a million dollars in revenue,” Lantink says. The designer also plans to move to Paris, where he says he has a better support network than Amsterdam, where 80 percent of his clothes are currently made.
Lantink is also developing its wholesale business: it currently has stocks in The broken arm In Paris, H. Lorenzo in Los Angeles and within Dover Street Market “Customers are surprised and excited to discover a brand like Duran’s in store,” says Kate Coffey, director of Dover Street Market Paris. “We have a lot of people trying on the puffy tops – it’s become a very social and playful meeting point during visits.” Coffey adds that Lantink’s puffy shorts, T-shirts and jeans are selling well. “It’s very different to anything else on the market today.”
Lantink’s hope is that customers will come across it. “I want people to think about whether it’s wearable, to give them the feeling that they could wear it on the street.” She says opting for “smaller shapes” is a way to get them to engage with her approach. “For me it’s an important way to grow, to start getting people to believe that a shape can be marketable.”
A commitment that could, plausibly, make Lantink’s dream come true: one day seeing someone in a supermarket wearing a bubble suit.
Casting, Piergiorgio Del Moro and Helena Balladino at DM Casting