The ridiculous beginnings of Duran Lantink to Jean Paul Gaultier

If ever had to be ripe for a return Jean Paul Gaultier, one might think that it was this one.

Mr. Gaultier, after all, became famous as a creator who dressed Madonna in a ball bra, but it was only one of his many fashion revolutions.

He put men in skirts long before gender fluidity was one thing; disputed religious stereotypes; kiss all types of body and skin; And believed that the camp and sewing could, and should coexist, scandalize and rejoice in an equal measure. For him, such provocations have never been a pose; These were expressions of real beliefs, supported by the reduction of the skills that had it in relation to Yves Saint Laurent, and earned him the best post in Hermès from 2003 to 2010. His clothes may have pushed the pimples, but they did it with real elegance.

He created such a deep well of chic social criticism that, since his retirement in 2020, a rotating distribution of designers, including Haider Ackermann (now from Tom Ford), Chitose Abe de Sacai and Olivier Rousteing de Balmain was able to try their hand in a couture collection for the room, finding a new inspiration in the old work of Mr. Gaultier.

So, the idea that Duran Lantink, a designer with his own terrible representative, would be the brand’s first official creative director since Mr. Gaultier himself, seemed to be a positive disturbance recipe.

What is Mr. Lantink, the guy who showed a man in the naked prosthesis of a woman’s breasts last season, and a woman in a man, would do his first Gaultier collection? Put a finger on the political wind that presides over – France has been filled with union strikes – Go to the archives and emerge with a new sharp comment? Seize the opportunity to ensure that Gaultier has public conversation again?

No. He sent the equivalent of the fashion for an unlined crotch.

More specifically, a body combination with a naked male body, in all its hairy and anatomically correct details, printed on the front. Then, there was what looked like diving combinations trenched until what was left was small football shoulders connected by ankle fabric strings, cut -up hounds at the waist as if they were directly from Jazzercise from the 80s, and a Breton striped dress formed like a wired S, so he resisted a portable panton president.

Apart from a few jackets of curved and curved suicide bomber, some pants designed to frame the hip bones and dive towards the genitals and a gold sequined coat, there were not many discernible clothes.

Not because Mr. Lantink made a high concept theorization like Rei Kawakubo like boys, who published this season, declaring notes declaring: “I believe in positivity and the value which can be born from perfect things damaging perfect things” – and then found it in increasingly complex amalgamation of slums, gox and lace. But because Mr. Lantink thought: raves!

“It is not necessary that we think:” Oh, there is a concept behind the curved thing “,” he said behind the scenes after the show. “In the end, I think what is really important in the process is that we are trying to be really fun. Jean Paul Gaultier is all about nudity and sexuality and provocation. ” But the provocation for the good of provocation is just childish.

That fashion can even be transgressive more is a real question. In a world where standards have been trampled on and railings for dissolved communication, where what was once the edges have become the dominant current, “edgy” itself has become a kind of hackneyed idea.

You can see it in the first ready-to-wear collection, generally dull, Maison Margiela de Glenn Martens-another designer whose passage invited to Gaultier led to a formidable collection. Mr. Martens, who had an equally triumphant Margiela Couture collection in July, this time sent his models with their lips stretched with a rictious smile created by mouths.

Although they were supposed to imitate the brand’s four -point logo, they rather looked like torture devices. And although they were a reference to the desire of the founder Martin Margiela to erase the person, so that the viewers focused on the clothes, they rather served in the opposite goal, distracting the experiences that Mr. Martens created: transforming necklaces and setbacks so that they have disappeared or become decorative; Using the adhesive tape to reshape a dress.

Meanwhile, the skin was everywhere: sportsman in Hermès, in bras of bra with leather pencil skirts; Woman in Givenchy, in more bras of bras associated with sarong-shaped skirts or under net dresses with explosive ruffles at the top. At this point, it looks less like an intrusion and more like an uptop of shoulders. Especially Rick Owens, the Lord of Darkness of Fashion, collaborates with a bra manufacturer and that the result seems quite soft, you know that there was a change in the atmosphere.

The parts of the body that have been the most visible are the navel and the bottom. At Alexander McQueen, Seán McGirr relaunched the Bumster and, once again in Gaultier, Mr. Lantink kissed the thong.

But while once, it could have been the last border of the convenience and cross it an implicit and explicit declaration of insurrection – against the establishment, the company, the old ways of seeing – now it seemed to be a scheme taken with attention. The reflection of the fact that when everything is exposed, the exposure itself becomes less and less consecutive.

And the most shocking thing of all about fashion can be to make big clothes.