Duran Lantink destroys and repurposes the status items of late capitalism, turns them into sculptural assemblages of layered semiotics, and feeds them back to the high fashion market.

Duran Lantink is a Dutch designer based in Amsterdam. Having studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the Sandberg Instituut — graduating from the latter in 2017 — Lantink’s playful, inclusive vision for the future of sustainable fashion has already seen him shortlisted for the 2019 LVMH Prize. With his innovative approach to upcycling, Lantink’s zero-waste philosophy uses pre-loved garments and deadstock fabrics to create fashion as agenda-setting as it is ethical.

His signature cut-and-paste approach, commitment to sustainability and subversive sense of humor — he loves combining deadstock materials from rival brands — is radical in an industry obsessed with newness.

Lantink wanted to riff on the often clichéd ways in which sexuality is marketed in fashion, by revealing body parts that are “rarely seen”, he tells British Vogue. With previous collections, Lantink had focused on combining pieces to create layered looks that were fully covered up. “There was never a lot of skin shown.”