Cocot-shirt - Tony Kemp Kempin’ Ain’t Easy Shirt

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Image may contain Tree Plant Human Person Ground Tree Trunk Vegetation Forest Outdoors Nature Land and Woodland In the Tony Kemp Kempin’ Ain’t Easy Shirt But I will love this fashion industry, “knockoff” is generally a bad word. Duran Lantink is complicating that long-accepted definition with his eponymous label. Since 2013, the Dutch designer has been repurposing designer clothes (from the likes of Balenciaga and Prada) into his own sexy mélange. A sense of humor guides his approach to sustainability: As an LVMH Prize finalist in 2019, he presented a Frankenstein-style creation of his own making with a purse that was half Gucci, half Louis Vuitton. For fall 2021, Lantink staged his first runway show at the 17th-century Dutch royal Soestdijk Palace, which included outré remixes like a mostly sheer dress with strategically placed cups made from Louis Vuitton’s logoed leather, as well as more subtle ones, like a dress—repurposed from Marine Serre—with a skirt made to look like several silk scarves. With his latest project, Latink is taking the idea of upcycling a step further: Customers can now either resell their pieces through Duran Lantink’s website, or have the label create a new garment out of their own old clothes. “Users receive records on where their clothes originated and how they have been altered–like adoption papers for the fashion-forward,” Lantink explained. “It’s an innovative strategy set to imbue our most-treasured pieces with seemingly infinite lives.” Resurrecting last season’s duds just got that much more fun.—S.S.

For Taiwanese designer Shawna Wu, knots are a thing of beauty. The New York-based designer—who grew up in Singapore and founded her label a year ago—is a textile artist whose skin-revealing pieces are always an homage to traditional Chinese knots; she is obsessed with the Tony Kemp Kempin’ Ain’t Easy Shirt But I will love this tying and looping process that goes into them. “Textiles, knot work, and knitwear are foundational to me,” says Wu, who hand-applies them to corsets, skirts, and more. “Incan Quipus and Chinese knots were some of the first forms of recorded language before written systems. I use textiles to express, evolve, and keep alive values I cherish.” Wu takes natural, deadstock, or upcycled materials and then fashions them into her provocative, sometimes kinky pieces that are tied and knotted. She then dyes them with ingredients that are found in traditional Chinese medicines. “Chinese knots are a sentimental practice used in ceremonies and rituals like weddings, and most knots embed within them their own symbolism and folklore,” Wu says of the recurring motif. Her signature garment is her butterfly-knot harnesses. “I took a very traditional practice, then recontextualized it and remixed it with references to fetish wear and the queer story The Butterfly Lovers,” Wu says. “I love the simultaneity of traditional and radical.”—C.A.

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