The Silliness Uprising: MadVan Brings Fashion Rebellion to Paris

Madison Van Der Lingen is in the business of silly. 

As the designer behind MadVan Design, she’s known in the Denver Fashion Week scene for avant garde collections that ride the line between high fashion and professional meme-ing.

That’s not to say that she’s careless with her brand or her designs. In fact, for her Spring 2025 DFW collection, she painstakingly handsewed a beaded garment, spending hours constructing by hand rather than breaking the beads with her sewing machine.

When it comes to design, materials and constructing cohesive collections, Van Der Lingen moves with intention. 

And when it comes to breaking the rules, she’s just as intentional. 

“I take the things that really matter to me seriously. The construction of a garment, I take very seriously. The sustainability aspect, very serious,” Van Der Lingen shared. “But where you can be a lunatic, just be a lunatic: the colors, the silhouettes, the people you choose and how they walk down the runway.” 

That same philosophy has made her a fixture in Denver’s fashion scene, where she leans into the city’s unconventional take on high fashion. In fact, she’s one of the longtime designers in the scene who helped make it what it is today: a safe space for designers to experiment on the runway, a place for models who don’t fit traditional molds to work with brands who not only celebrate that difference but prefer it. 

Next month, she’ll bring this lunacy to the Paris Fashion Week runway, representing rule-breakers on a global stage. 

For Van Der Lingen, casting isn’t about chasing industry standards. She prioritizes energy over uniformity, a method that supports the cohesiveness of her brand and allows her to work with models who embody the playfulness of her designs. Whether that’s the “tinies” she styles in baby doll dresses or the androgynous models she centers in ethereal designs, the MadVan Design universe is otherworldly: without gender, without rules and without apology. 

Her shows blur the line between runway and performance art, where clothing is only one part of the story. Alien hair and makeup, models screaming on the runway and building storylines throughout her collection create a kind of controlled chaos that reflects her ethos: silliness with intention. Each season, the runway transforms into a stage for living characters rather than mannequins, amplifying her artistry (and playing on the roots as a costume design student). 

Of course, there’s strategy behind the madness. To Van Der Lingen, silliness isn’t just theater: it’s a powerful tool for challenging fashion’s obsession with perfection. Especially at a time where social media celebrates trad wives and clean girls, MadVan Design is naturally resistive, both in its ability to break rules and Van Der Lingen’s unapologetic silliness. 

In response the rise of traditional values in mainstream culture, MadVan Design knows that resistance in an industry that’s long celebrated conformity is crucial now more than ever. As such, her collections strike the balance between explicit statements of resistance and playful non-conformity.

“I also think that having fun and being silly in your art is so important right now, too,” said Van Der Lingen. “It’s like everything that’s serious should be serious. And I take silliness really seriously. Like, I’m in the business of silly. Because, you know, people say, ‘don’t take yourself so serious.’ I do, but in a way that’s silly.” 

Sometimes, Van Der Lingen’s resistance takes the form of pure runway lunacy. But as MadVan Design has grown, that resistance has become more overt. 

“It was definitely a big part of my brand from the beginning,” Van Der Lingen explained. “A couple years ago, I was a little scared to do that kind of stuff because I hadn’t really grounded my brand. But now that I feel like it has its footing, I know people are going to disagree with me even if I make art that’s not even that profoundly different. So I might as well just say exactly what I mean.”

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This shift is evident in pieces like her Cancel Student Debt dress, which riffs on the camouflage aesthetic traditionally associated with militias but reclaims it as a progressive statement, and her People Over Profit dress, a text-driven gown that foregrounds social responsibility. Each garment turns a simple concept into a visual manifesto, proving that MadVan Design’s silliness can carry serious weight.

“With the People Over Profit dress, I needed a statement that is clearly left-leaning, but like, how can anyone be mad about this statement?” said Van Der Lingen. “People should always come before profit. And if you disagree with that, you’re telling on yourself, right?” 

After six years of turning Denver’s fashion scene into a playground for the unconventional, Van Der Lingen is taking MadVan Design to Paris Fashion Week this October. And while the global stage gives her a bigger platform for intentional, silly resistance, she’s confronting rules she’s long stopped paying attention to – some that directly contradict what her brand stands for. 

In fact, she first submitted to Paris Fashion Week not expecting a Goliath of fashion week to give her designs the time of day. When she found out she was selected, she was thrilled by the opportunity, but soon learned that Paris is not the rule-bending scene that Denver often leans into. 

“I put my name in the running last year, and then I got the email saying that I was selected. I literally just did it as a meme,” she shared. “They sent me an email saying, ‘all of your models are size zero to a two. They’re all 5’11”, and it’s very specific, and there’s no inclusivity in that realm. They’re still in that world.’” 

That world – one still operating with rigidity when it comes to height and size – presents challenges for Van Der Lingen, whose life’s work celebrates the unconventional. And with restrictions around how many garments she can fit inside her luggage, the challenge isn’t just participating: it’s how to bend a space built on rigidity into something equal parts playful, inclusive and defiant. 

If anything, the more rigid the runway, the more meaningful it will be when MadVan breaks the rules. 

At its core, MadVan Design is silliness with purpose, chaos with intention. At Paris Fashion Week, Van Der Lingen will find out whether the rules she’s spent years breaking in Denver can hold up on a stage where conformity still reigns. 

What makes Van Der Lingen’s work more than just playful costumes or eye-catching statements is the way it demands a reconsideration of what fashion can (and should) be. In a world that’s slowly letting go of narrow standards of beauty and perfection, MadVan Design reminds us that clothing can be anything we want it to be: joyous, resistant, silly, serious. By centering the unconventional and bringing humor, politics and humanity to the forefront, Van Der Lingen challenges the industry’s gatekeepers while giving audiences permission to appreciate the unexpected. 

As such, her Paris debut is certainly a milestone for her brand – but it’s also a signal that beauty shouldn’t come at the cost of inclusivity. That high fashion and irreverent experimentation aren’t mutually exclusive. 

If conformity is a battle, silliness is MadVan’s weapon. And come Paris Fashion Week, we’ll find out if industry giants are willing to bend the knee to the weirdo revolution, with Madison Van Der Lingen leading the charge.