The ability to experience and touch the clothes firsthand is key to how Lantink discovered fashion himself. Growing up in The Hague, the Netherlands, he would visit a store whose selection included designs by Gaultier, Alaïa, Mugler, and Maison Margiela. “There was a tiny boutique, Puck & Hans, and it was completely filled with all these designer things,” Lantink recalls. His parents — his mother was an interior designer and his stepfather worked in the antiques trade — would wear Gaultier. He remembers seeing them and their friends wear cone bras to parties. “I feel like we need to have these small curated boutiques in small towns to get everybody excited about fashion, so it becomes less generalized,” he says.
Lantink has been enjoying the support of fashion’s original enfant terrible, Jean Paul Gaultier. “We text, we have lunch together at his place,” Lantink says. Speaking of lunch, it’s 3pm, Lantink and Barnes, who hadn’t time to eat, are nibbling on pizza before getting back to the show fittings.
