Dutch designer Duran Lantink’s highlight of the last year? “Seeing Bernard Arnault’s face when I placed a half Louis Vuitton, half Gucci shopping bag on the wall at the LVMH Prize showroom.” Although you might know him best for those vagina pants worn by Janelle Monàe in her “PYNK” video, this blasphemous merging of two brands owned by the rival conglomerates is a great shorthand for Lantink’s wickedly rebellious work as a whole.
Frustrated by fashion’s rampant overconsumption, Lantink’s current practice sees him take leftover deadstock and sale pieces and splice them together to create improbable new garments: picture a Marni-#oldceline mash-up, or a Balenciaga boot combined with a Miu Miu platform.
It’s a fun approach to the serious subject of sustainability, a topic that’s only getting more important. “Once luxury and fast fashion brands were at opposite ends of the spectrum, but a new order has emerged,” the designer says. “We are going to have to change our whole outlook on life, and learn not to want the things we think we want.” Plans for the rest of the year include a series of pop-ups, and the release of a photobook that’s the result of a longterm project between him, photographer Jan Hoek, and sistaahhood: a transgender sex workers group in Cape Town.
Emma Hope Allwood