A Masterpiece of Upcycling and Avant-Garde Fashion

You know that feeling when something both fascinates and unsettles you, yet you can’t tear your eyes away? That’s precisely where Dutch designer Duran Lantink landed upon his first encounter with snake print. “This is awful,” he thought—only to immediately realize, “But I’m strangely drawn to it.” This contradiction—the irresistible allure of repulsion—became the sinuous, textured core of his Fall 2025 collection, a riot of animalistic instinct, upcycled disorder, and mind-bending performance art that makes every fashion week headache entirely worthwhile.

Lantink, a designer known for his unorthodox approach to fashion, has never been one for convention. This season, he decided to take his rebellion a step further by quite literally invading an office. The show unfolded at Bureau Betak’s new headquarters, the production powerhouse behind iconic spectacles for Dior, Saint Laurent, and other luxury giants. Models slinked through workstations occupied by real employees, their presence an intentional disruption of the mundane. “We had this idea of really, sort of, intruding on their space,” Lantink explained. If fashion is a job, Lantink made it clear: this is work worth disrupting.

But the disruption didn’t stop there. As models navigated the office floor, an 18-person opera ensemble performed “Paragraph 7,” a haunting piece in which each singer belted out a different song simultaneously. The result was an unsettling symphony of discordant voices that echoed through the space, creating an atmosphere that was equal parts chaotic and meditative. “Not sure if you still want to come, though,” Lantink had joked before the show. “It sounds chaotic, but weirdly enough, it’s quite meditative.”

Gone was the restraint of Lantink’s previous collections. Fall 2025 was a full-throttle commitment to excess. Prints exploded in their wildest, most clashing extremes—python, leopard, tartan, and camo colliding in a visual cacophony that defied traditional notions of harmony. “Last season, we were quite sharp with form and color—this time, we wanted to go a bit more wild,” Lantink said. Shapes sharpened into squares, but textures ran rampant. Deadstock pony-hair, remixed camo tees, and hand-knitted tartan (crafted by a collective of older Dutch female artisans whom Lantink affectionately called “radical knit nerds”) added layers of tactile intrigue. If last season’s woman was streamlined and polished, this season’s muse was an aristocratic English lady on acid—one who, on a whim, threw on snake-print leggings just to see what would happen.

What did happen? A transformation. An unraveling of identity. “It’s about challenging yourself with something you maybe don’t like and finding the beauty in it,” Lantink mused. His creative process is anything but formulaic. “We don’t do moodboards—it’s more about a dialogue with the stylist, the art director, the sound director. Conversations that slowly build into something cohesive.” The result was a collection that felt like an evolutionary fever dream—a space where human and animal merged, structure and chaos collided, and beauty emerged from the unexpected.

From the first look, the show established itself as an assault on the senses. Mica Argañaraz opened the show in a sculpted prosthetic man’s chest, complete with a chiseled six-pack, her baggy pants slung daringly low. The runway—or, more accurately, the office floor—became a site of metamorphosis. Prints multiplied, textures thickened, and silhouettes grew feral. One moment, models strutted in oversized varsity jackets and toggle coats; the next, Leon Dame stomped out in zebra body paint, a matching thong, and thigh-high boots, looking like he had just escaped from a deranged fashion safari.

The collection wasn’t just about visual impact—it was about physicality, transformation, and the unsettling beauty of excess. Lantink played with shape in a way that felt radical yet instinctual. Where last season had leaned into soft curves, this time, structure reigned. Boxy blazers with exaggerated shoulders gave way to fluid, draped pieces that slithered around the body like second skins. Some garments looked unfinished, as if they were still in the process of evolving—raw hems, deconstructed tailoring, and unexpected material juxtapositions added to the sense of wild experimentation.

Then came the finale—a moment that left the audience both baffled and mesmerized. Chandler Frye walked out in a prosthetic top with bouncing, cartoonishly oversized breasts. Some editors scoffed, unsure whether to laugh, cringe, or applaud. But after speaking with Lantink, the moment felt oddly poetic. Gender, form, identity—it was all up for grabs. What started as a satire of hyper-masculinity and hyper-femininity ended as something strangely beautiful, proving that in Lantink’s world, transformation is always the point.

At its core, the show was controlled mayhem—a meticulously planned spectacle that felt reckless in the best way. “It’s about escapism,” Lantink said. “Transcending into a different space where you can forget something and just be inspired by the sound and atmosphere.” But even in the midst of this sensory overload, Lantink’s signature remained clear: upcycling, hybridization, and deconstruction. His process this time, however, felt looser, more instinctual. “It’s always a mix,” he explained. “We started with round shapes, but now we’re leaning into sharper, more structured forms.”

There was humor, too—Lantink named the collection Dur-Animal, a nod to the endless high school nicknames he’s accrued (last season was Duran-Ski, and yes, he’s considering Durex next). “It’s a bit of a joke, obviously,” he laughed. “But then it turned out the collection actually is quite animal print-based.”

It’s easy to call Lantink’s work chaotic, but that would be missing the point. There’s an intense deliberation behind every decision, a method to the madness that speaks to a deeper understanding of what fashion can be. His work exists in tension—between beauty and ugliness, order and disorder, past and future. This season, that tension reached its most extreme form yet, resulting in a collection that felt like a living organism, constantly shifting, adapting, and challenging perceptions.

“I think [the message] is pretty clear,” he teased. “But I’d rather see what people take from it.”

Now, if you’ll excuse him, he has some binge-watching to do. “I’ve been waiting to watch White Lotus season 3, but I don’t have time right now,” he said. “So after the show, I’m going to binge-watch and sleep. And then wake up and start working again.” Because in Lantink’s world, transformation never stops.