Dutch designer Duran Lantink has been named as the new creative director of French fashion house Jean Paul Gaultier.

Gaultier retired in 2020, and since then the company has worked with guest designers for its collections. The 72-year-old has described Lantink as the “new enfant terrible” of fashion – a name once given to himself.

“I see in him the energy, audacity and playful spirit through fashion that I had at the beginning of my own journey: the new enfant terrible of fashion,” Gaultier said in a statement.

Lantink said it is a “real honour” to join the company. “I consider Jean Paul Gaultier to be a genius and part of a generation that has broken down barriers so that people like us can be as we are,” he is quoted by NOS as saying.

The 37-year-old graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld art school in Amsterdam and hit the headlines in 2018 when he designed a pair of “vagina pants” for American artist Janelle Monáe to wear in a video. The trousers are now part of Utrecht’s Centraal Museum collection.

The Hague-born Lantink will present his first ready-to-wear collection for Gaultier during Paris Fashion Week in September. His first couture collection will be unveiled in January.

Fashion magazine Vogue said of the appointment that Lantink’s “bold, exaggerated silhouettes stand out at a time when fashion is playing it safe”, and that his Autumn/Winter 2025 show in March was among the most talked about of the season in Paris.

The designer has also won several prestigious awards including LVMH’s 2024 Karl Lagerfeld Special Jury Prize and most recently the Woolmark Prize.

“I think now more than ever, it’s important to be a bit more radical. Because if we’re not being radical, then what are we doing?” he said during his acceptance speech earlier this month.