“Duran used to say to me, ‘If I see a flat roll of fabric, I freak out because I don’t know what to do with it!’ ” recalls the designer Kym Ellery, sitting in the audience at her friend Duran Lantink’s spring 2024 show, in Paris. Evidence is growing that he has figured it out. It was only the second runway presentation for the Dutch designer, and his first on the official calendar, but Lantink has already made a name for himself as a champion of upcycling, creating eye-popping statements from existing garments and discarded fabrics. Ellery and Lantink first met during the pandemic, when she gave him carte blanche to reconfigure items from the archives of her brand, Ellery. “Duran vibrates in a different way than most,” she says. “More than ever, we need people in fashion whose intention is purely creative.”
