With the help of exhibitions, Jeanne Lanvin’s eponymous fashion house is keeping her legacy alive – The Art Newspaper

Jeanne Lanvin was a trailblazer in Twentieth-century French style and interiors. The primary she labored on herself, shifting from youngsters’s garments to couture, to change into celebrated each at residence and overseas from 1910, when she joined the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture, till her dying in 1946. The second she labored on with sought-after stars of the day: Armand-Albert Rateau and Eugène Printz. Rateau designed the inside of Jeanne’s magnificent residence at 16 rue Barbet-de-Jouy within the seventh arrondissement of Paris; Printz did the inside of her workplace at 22 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, the place shoppers might view themselves from each angle within the three-way mirror that slid on a curving observe. Accomplished in 1930, that is the place Peter Copping and Olivier Gabet have their very own dialog 95 years later, in a room the place nothing has modified.

The home of Lanvin has by no means closed since Jeanne opened her first millinery retailer in 1889, aged 22, although it has gone by means of many modifications. It was bought by the household in 1980 to L’Oréal and is now a part of the Lanvin Group. Since July 2024, British-born Copping has been its creative director, a designer with expertise at Louis Vuitton, Oscar de la Renta and Balenciaga, the place till lately he ran the couture division. A person with a wealth of design data, he has nonetheless discovered the Lanvin archive—a deep trove of fastidiously conserved clothes, embroidery, dolls, textiles and equipment—to be not like some other he has labored with.

Gabet is the director of the Division of Objets d’Artwork on the Musée du Louvre—a sprawling 9,000 sq. m area that encompasses all the pieces from medieval spiritual icons to Nineteenth-century glass, and the place this 12 months he curated an exhibition, Louvre Couture, of 99 appears borrowed immediately from 45 style homes. For 9 years, Gabet was the director of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, additionally a part of the Louvre. There he was the custodian of full rooms taken immediately from Jeanne Lanvin’s condo—together with the bed room, boudoir and loo—which at the moment are on everlasting show.

CR You each have a particular connection to Jeanne Lanvin. How do you see her as a girl and an distinctive inventive drive, and the way a lot has her archive assured her legacy?

OG I used to be determined to placed on a Lanvin exhibition once I was on the Musée des Arts Décoratifs from 2013 to 2022. She appeared such an necessary determine—as a girl, a collector, a clothier, an area maker. Sadly, it by no means occurred, however I’m at all times prepared to speak about Jeanne.

PC That may have been a tremendous present. Once I arrived at Lanvin, one of many first issues I did was to revisit the Musée des Arts Décoratifs. It felt actually necessary to have a look at these interiors once more, as a manner to determine who this lady was. Being within the bed room, with its blue silk-lined partitions embroidered with palm leaves and daisies, was to be immersed in her universe. Even the gilded door handles are fitted with paperweight balls—apparently, she collected them. After which there’s the lavatory—stucco partitions, a flooring tiled in black, beige and white Hauteville marble. At occasions the tiles are organized to appear to be Modernist carpets. They’ve appeared as prints in my first assortment. And naturally, there’s the padded leopard-print rest room seat. The decadence!

CR What sort of lady do you assume she was?

PC She got here from a really humble background, so her type and style got here from inside; she had an innate sense of magnificence. Then, as a businesswoman, she ran a wide-ranging operation, way more than a couture home. By the Nineteen Twenties, she had branched out into furs, menswear, lingerie and fragrance. She acquired her personal dye manufacturing facility in Nanterre, so she was in a position to obtain colors on sure materials that different individuals on the time would have discovered tough or unimaginable. She ran her personal embroidery ateliers as nicely. Her daughter was additionally an energetic participant within the Lanvin enterprise, as a muse, however not a passive one.

OG I’ve simply learn the biography of her daughter, Marguerite, by David Gaillardon, and I noticed Jeanne in a special mild—possibly not really easy. I imply, she was undoubtedly beneficiant, and he or she enabled Marguerite to change into a superb musician and marry into the aristocracy; she grew to become Countess Marie-Blanche de Polignac. Jeanne, too, had married nicely, to the aristocratic Emilio di Pietro. However she comes throughout as a really reserved one who would like to sit down within the nook. Her daughter, alternatively, is surrounded by all these dashing individuals. She’s very social. She knew all the good musicians of the early Twentieth century: Satie, Poulenc, Fauré. Everyone knows about Elsa Schiaparelli, the socialite, and Gabrielle Chanel, the social climber. Lanvin is the third in that triumvirate, the older one, the matriarch. She constructed her empire rapidly, making sturdy aesthetic choices about who she selected to collaborate with—the designer Armand-Albert Rateau, for instance. She married, divorced, remarried and paid for all the pieces for each her former husband and her new husband. She appears very forward of her time.

PC If you happen to have been to check her to somebody as we speak, it may very well be Miuccia Prada, one other sturdy, inventive businesswoman. Do you keep in mind the time Mrs Prada arrived on the Met Gala in 2023, trying excellent—satin pants and a satin tunic, nothing to do with Met Gala-style fancy costume?

OG Oh, fully! She didn’t give a hoot concerning the purple carpet. She is aware of it’s her obligation to be there, however she walks in prefer it’s a traditional day. Very Jeanne Lanvin.

CR If Prada is as we speak’s mental, then Lanvin, too, was involved along with her legacy and her archive. She appears to have needed to catalogue all of her work in fairly a tutorial manner.

PC I’ve been advised she needed to arrange a museum, and that might clarify why the archive is so in-depth. It’s housed simply outdoors of Paris and incorporates 1000’s of items. I just like the embroidery samples most of all, swatches upon swatches. Lots of them are usually geometric designs they usually’re pinned on paper that has been recycled—previous consumer orders. So you have got details about a consumer’s acquisition, and sometimes some private feedback like: “She’s gained a little bit of weight.” It’s a stunning perception. A number of the designs I’ve used immediately, like this considered one of giant mirror sequins on a silver embroidered panel.

OG The archive offers a wealth of data for us as historians. The couturier’s job was to make sure that you’d by no means costume two shoppers precisely the identical manner—there’s a really private relationship.

PC We’ve got loads of garments from the Nineteen Twenties which are very stunning, very fragile, very inspiring. However the silhouette doesn’t essentially do it for me, it’s flat. While you look in direction of the Thirties, it turns into extra fascinating—nonetheless near the physique, however extra advanced. Although the necklines are modest and sleeves or capes cowl the arms at the very least to the elbow, there’s a particular intercourse attraction in the best way sure components of the physique have been revealed. A costume may need an open again or an fascinating facet slit. It’s very refined and seductive. It’s a great distance from the curves and corsetry of the Forties and Fifties.

OG My interval could be the Nineteen Twenties. She’s the one one working with that type of silhouette, and he or she’s super-powerful. In 1925, she was invited to organise the style part of the Worldwide Exhibition of Trendy Ornamental and Industrial Arts in Paris, a landmark occasion within the historical past of style and magnificence, which ultimately gave us the time period Artwork Deco. She embodies that second fully. I get excited by individuals who command some type of transitional second, and Lanvin is considered one of them. Chanel additionally got here from a quite simple background and had some revolutionary concepts round liberating girls by means of costume. However while you see [Chanel’s] way of life, within the condo on rue Cambon, it was all flowers, crystal, Boulle furnishings. Lanvin, in contrast, brings one thing of the Outdated World to the New World. She liked Nineteenth-century sulphur glass, which was the style of stylish individuals on the time, and appeared again to the Nineteenth-century Second Empire, which was coming again into style. She’s fashionable with a twist. Equally, Rateau’s method isn’t radical. Within the bas reduction in Lanvin’s toilet, you’ll be able to see that Rateau had visited Herculaneum and Pompeii [in 1914], but it surely additionally refers to Renaissance tapestry with stags and birds.

PC What I like in her work and the interiors is the extent of high quality, the love of workmanship, and that sense of transition that you simply talk about, Olivier. Once I visited the Lanvin rooms on the Musée des Arts Décos, I found that some textiles had been changed, however the unique light material faraway from among the chairs was in storage. We did a color match of that light blue material and I used it within the first assortment in very refined methods, in linings for instance. It’s the Lanvin blue of as we speak.

OG High quality pervades her world. She had an exquisite assortment of Impressionist work, actually good works by Renoir and Monet and Boudin. And naturally, Édouard Vuillard, who was her up to date. He was a witty, sensible, mental man, fairly edgy for his time, and he or she selected him to color her portrait. It’s iconic, and an expression of energy.

PC That portrait impressed one of many items for autumn/winter 2025. I translated the inexperienced velvet jacket she is sporting right into a menswear piece. We’ve tried to have a look at her in her entirety in the best way we’ve constructed the gathering. The black and gold clothes, for instance, characterize her magnificence and energy. Footwear designed for a black-and-red outfit referred to as Polka impressed the footwear. I didn’t wish to have a look at the archive in a tutorial manner, it was extra a case of what resonated with me.

OG In most homes, the archive has change into the accepted framework for continuation. However it’s necessary how you utilize it. It shouldn’t restrict the creativity of a recent designer. It’s nice the way you’ve handled it as a catalyst, Peter. And Lanvin presents a lot—rooms in a museum, a silhouette, a jacket for the Comtesse Greffulhe based mostly on the tiles within the [Paris] underground.

PC It’s a present. At Nina Ricci, for instance, the archive items didn’t actually resonate. The heritage of the fragrance, L’Air du Temps, was maybe extra evocative. However from the minute I used to be concerned about style, Lanvin was a home that I considered. We even referenced Lanvin on plenty of totally different events once I was at Louis Vuitton, although not in a literal manner. I keep in mind then trying on the Lanvin archives and pondering, “God, I’m so jealous of getting all that to tug from.” And right here I’m.