The seasoned British designer will join the French heritage brand in September, stepping into a role that has remained vacant for over a year
Lanvin has appointed Peter Copping as artistic director, in charge of womenswear and menswear collections as well as leather goods and accessories. The seasoned designer, known for his feminine creations, will join the French heritage house in September.
Lanvin had been searching for an artistic director since the departure of Bruno Sialelli in April 2023. Its last runway show was in March 2023 for autumn/winter '23.
“Peter Copping’s arrival at Lanvin is an important milestone in the renaissance of one of the great French maisons,” Siddhartha Shukla, deputy CEO of Lanvin, said in a statement on Thursday. “I am confident that with Peter’s vision and technical rigour and the continued perseverance of our teams globally, we will identify a new frontier in fashion and deliver beauty and results in equal measure.”
After graduating from Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art in London, Copping began his career at Sonia Rykiel before spending over a decade at Louis Vuitton with Marc Jacobs as head of womenswear. He was subsequently creative director of Nina Ricci from 2009 to 2014 and of Oscar de la Renta (as de la Renta’s successor) from 2014 to 2016. After that, Copping was hired as head of couture at Balenciaga in 2019 and, in 2022, became head of VIP and special projects ateliers at the house, working on the red carpet looks notably for the Oscars and the Met Gala.
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Photo: Riccardo Olerhead
Amid a trend of hiring artistic directors with more curator profiles to oversee marketing and image, Lanvin chose a couturier with technical expertise. On his Oscar de la Renta spring 2016 collection, Vogue Runway’s Sarah Mower wrote: “The combination of respectfulness for the founder and pure personal flair made for a collection that succeeded in making every woman present at the show want to be part of Copping’s ravishing modern view of femininity and sexuality.”
Founded by Jeanne Lanvin in 1889, Lanvin is the oldest continually operating couture house in France, though it stopped presenting on the haute couture calendar and closed its couture business after Claude Montana – the French designer known for his big-shoulder ’80s silhouettes – vacated in 1992 after a two-year stint.
When Alber Elbaz joined in 2001, he turned the dusty French house into a firm favourite among women, known for duchesse satin, cocktail dresses and statement jewellery, and bringing a couture aesthetic to ready-to-wear. Since the ousting of the star designer in 2015, however, the house has weathered a few rocky years. Owner Shaw-Lan Wang appointed Bouchra Jarrar to the creative helm in 2016; she left after two seasons and was succeeded by Olivier Lapidus, who too left after just two seasons. Sales plummeted to €35 million in 2020, down from €143 million in 2015, according to public filings. Sialelli held the role from 2019 to 2023.
Shukla has led a reboot since joining Lanvin in December 2021. The brand, which is now owned by China’s Lanvin Group (formerly Fosun Fashion Group), posted sales of €73 million in 2021 and €120 million in 2022. Lanvin sales decreased seven per cent to €112 million in 2023 on the year prior but gross profit increased to €65 million from €61 million in 2022. In its annual earnings statement, the Lanvin Group attributed this improvement to “higher full-price sell-through, an increase in the balance of accessories versus ready-to-wear sales, a further shift to higher margin boutique sales, and better inventory management”.
The group – which also includes Austrian skinwear specialist Wolford, menswear brand Caruso and Italian shoemaker Sergio Rossi – debuted on the New York Stock Exchange in December 2022.
“As Lanvin Group’s flagship brand, Lanvin is an integral part of our family,” Zhen Huang, chairman of Lanvin Group said in a statement. “With the nomination of Peter Copping, we look forward to the maison’s continued transformation and growth.”
Copping will also work with Shukla on Lanvin Lab, the experimental space introduced last year. Lanvin Lab’s first creative partnership was a collection with American rapper Future.
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“Jeanne Lanvin was a visionary of her time whose interests and passions extended far beyond fashion, as do my own,” said Copping in a statement. (He is famously passionate about interior design and antiques and even created a line of ‘haute cushions’ and throws named La Carlière, after his manor in Normandy.)
“I am certain that Peter’s outstanding talent and capacity to reinterpret the codes of the maison with curiosity and innovation make him the ideal candidate to drive success for Lanvin,” added Eric Chan, CEO of Lanvin Group.
Originally published on vogue.com