Welcoming Peter Copping to Lanvin—A Studio Visit With Fashion’s Newest Most Experienced Hand
By
Sarah MowerPhotography by
Benjamin Malapris
January 24, 2025
Peter Copping, at his desk chez LanvinPhotographed by Benjamin Malapris
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With the winds of change—or gale-force gossip, rather—sweeping so many fashion houses, it falls to Peter Copping to make the first of several hugely-anticipated debuts of the year. His inaugural show for Lanvin takes to the runway on Sunday, January 26. The
twinkly-eyed British designer, whose optimistic sense of humor is allied with all kinds of professional competencies, has a surprise or two up his sleeve. Appropriately enough for a house showing on the bridge day between the Paris men’s shows and the haute couture schedule, Copping is about to show men’s and women’s collections together. “It’s really the first time I’ve done menswear,” he beamed. “It’s so important to be challenged all the time.”
And there really can’t be much that Copping hasn’t done. It’s no flattery to say that the 57 year-old is one of the most highly-experienced and much-liked designers who’ve been either a front-man or a key behind-scenes studio asset for years. From 2020 to last summer, he was at Balenciaga, working with Demna in the couture studio. His first job—back in 1994, recently graduated from Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art—was at Sonia Rykiel, “which gave me my first love for knitwear.” In between, he was a righthand on pre-collections during Marc Jacob’s tenure at Louis Vuitton, Artistic Director at Nina Ricci from 2009 to 2014, and briefly Creative Director of
Oscar de La Renta from 2014 to 2015.
“I’ve worked out that I’ve actually lived more of my life in Paris than the UK,” he laughed. “Thirty years, last year.” Knowing his way around—and experiencing the changes in the industry, and the impacts from them on design staff—means he’s bringing a professional empathy to the house of Lanvin. “When I came here I wanted to work with the team. I don’t like it so much when a new director comes in, and then everyone loses their job. There’s really a good team who know their craft and the house.
For this conversation, Copping and I were starting off in the Lanvin studio, where he joined in September, and then—he promised—taking a stroll over to visit Jeanne Lanvin’s studio—which has been there above the boutique on the Rue du Faubourg St. Honore since the 1920s.
“Blue was a fetish color for Lanvin…” says Copping. “It’s become the inspiration for the show space. The past, but as it is now. I thought that’s a nice way of thinking about it.”
Photographed by Benjamin Malapris
Who knew? Lanvin never publicized this preserved Art Deco-era gem even during Alber Elbaz’s storied tenure. But in researching the founder, Copping is finding oodles to draw into the present from Jeanne Lanvin’s design, business, and her own research. “Her heyday was the ’20s and ’30s. She started as a milliner, and her daughter was her muse. She was also the first to do sportswear and menswear. And she travelled a lot. Once to Egypt, with the owners of Hermès, whose store is just over the street from hers!”
Copping has been looking at couture sketches from Jeanne Lanvin’s ’20s and ’30s collections, as well as dresses in the collections of the Palais Galliera and The Met’s Costume Institute. “I don’t want to be academic about it. I’m cherry-picking details. It could be something like brown top-stitching on navy, or the half-capes that were a signature of her eveningwear, or the balloon sleeves she did, transposed onto the sleeves of a trench coat.” Peaked visors in the collection will nod at the founder’s millinery beginnings.
The ethos of Lanvin’s origin story is just as inspiring to Copping—and relevant for revival in the present. As well as being hugely successful in her day and mad about commissioning state-of-the-art interior design (Copping is likewise a passionate interiors enthusiast), she also prioritized the welfare of her staff, and had the mother and daughter image designed into her logo. “In general, I love her sense of family. Obviously I realize today that, you know, family can mean anything to a lot of people, you know, it’s not necessarily any longer about a mother-daughter relationship, because, you know, as we all know, adopted families are really great as well. Or the friends and people you group around you,” he says. “Nonetheless, looking at the mother and daughter aspect, kind of gives me cross-generational license. For the show we’re looking at women and men of different ages together. Something I want to do—and it’s not all going to happen in five minutes—is to create that sort of family of people and characters that can form a kind of unit.”
“I think I’m known as a ‘feminine’ designer. I like a pencil skirt—long, to just above the ankle, with a heel feels fresh to me,” says Copping.
Photographed by Benjamin Malapris
Copping at work.
Photographed by Benjamin Malapris
A first glimpse at the women’s collection shows a lot of elegantly constructed daywear: drop-waist coats, cabans, and narrow, long-line skirts, some in black leather. “I think I’m known as a ‘feminine’ designer. I like a pencil skirt—long, to just above the ankle, with a heel feels fresh to me.” Men will be in for treats such as gorgeously floppy shirts which appear to be pinstriped but are actually collaged from vertical strips (in homage to Lanvin’s love of ribbon.) He’s working on parachute-silk pieces inspired by Katharine Hamnett’s 1980s collections—but also a modern, more decorative and embellished eveningwear. “Because now we’ve got Timothée Chalamet, all that’s completely changed for menswear.”
Over in Jeanne Lanvin’s office, Copping is pulling down books from her library. She collected books on 19th century French fashion, folk costume, and art from all over the world. Other shelves are stacked with fabrics brought back from her trips to India and Egypt. “I mean, you see where she got so many of her silhouettes and ideas from,” Copping exclaims. “I don’t want sound pretentious or anything, but when I’m here in her office, and you see what she looked like and what excited her, I really feel like somehow I’m on the same page. The things that would get her going are completely the same thing for me.”
To be clear, it doesn’t look at all like we’re going to see a Roaring Twenties collection—but there’s a new feeling of energy and positivity in the air around here that fashion can really do with more of right now. Jeanne Lanvin will only be present in the set Copping and his team have meticulously researched. “Blue was a fetish color for her. She had her apartment and office designed in 1922 by the great Deco-era interior decorator Armand-Albert Rateau. Her bedroom is in Musée Arts Decoratif, and they opened it up for us. They had the original fabric of the chairs, conserved—all faded to this beautiful powdery blue, which we color-matched. It’s become the inspiration for the show space. The past, but as it is now. I thought that’s a nice way of thinking about it.”
Peter Copping’s Lanvin debut is Sunday, January 26 at 8 pm in Paris.
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