Upon discovering Duran Lantink’s first collection for Jean Paul Gaultier, I admittedly felt strangely bewildered. On Sunday, October 5, 2025, amid the hushed tumult of the runway show, the Dutch designer, who emerged from obscurity in 2018 thanks to Janelle Monáe and her daring pantsuits reminiscent of a woman’s nymph in the Pynk music video, had already provoked outrage.

I’m well aware that the fashion world loves scandal and the play of provocations that sing louder than its lute. But this first collection, under the Gaultier brand, neither lives up to expectations nor the subtle elegance that is the charm of this profession. It appears, alas, crude, almost inconsequential; it’s the parade of the mediocre and the abject that the cheese of our decadence has spontaneously given birth to for the inexorable decoration of aesthetic sense.

Yet I remember those collections where audacity blended with playfulness, where clothing became celebration and poetry. None of that here. This show, supposed to open a new chapter, seems to ignore creativity, expertise, and, paradoxically, audacity itself.

Then there’s the complacency of the Bimbos, both striking and saddening in their intellectual poverty, which highlights the weaknesses of an industry incapable of recognizing error, admitting failure, or measuring the vertigo of disappointment. As always, fashion is more forgiving of appearances than of the truth.

FM