The kind designs of Peter Copping’s Lanvin
The brand’s artistic director, an industry stalwart, is making flattering luxury to love. Is it enough?
Text by Jo Ellison
Photography by Amélie Ambroise
Styling by Rose Forde
Published Sep 11 2025
There were cheers when Peter Copping was appointed artistic director of Lanvin in June 2024. A well-liked industry stalwart who had worked previously at Louis Vuitton, Sonia Rykiel, Christian Lacroix, Nina Ricci and Oscar de la Renta, the 59-year-old was viewed as a reassuring choice for the oldest French fashion house still in operation. In an environment of freneticism, two-year contracts and celebrity designers, this announcement made total sense.
“It was kind of funny coming back, and being in that position [as artistic director] again,” says Copping. “Because I was a bit… out of action, you know. In the background, for a while. And I found that things had really changed.”
A tall, bearded Englishman with a Holbeinesque profile and a country burr, Copping grew up in Oxfordshire and studied at Central Saint Martins, but is now practically a Frenchman having been – except for a short sojourn in New York – so long in France. After leaving Oscar de la Renta in 2016, he took a mini-break from fashion to concentrate on renovating his home, La Carlière, a delicious 16th-century manor house in Normandy that he shares with his partner Rambert Rigaud (they have an apartment in Paris too). They subsequently launched a line of interior furnishings that are sold under the La Carlière name.
But he was by no means “out of action”. Copping was also, very quietly, working with Demna (formerly known as Demna Gvasalia), the provocative Georgian designer at Balenciaga, where Copping was charged with “orchestrating” the couture offering at the house. Copping’s work was instrumental in elevating the brand away from an aesthetic that had become entwined with street style, albeit with Demna’s radical silhouettes and sensibility. “Balenciaga was very much outside of my comfort zone,” says Copping. “But I have huge admiration for Demna, his way of working and looking at things. That said,” he adds wryly, “it’s great to be back at the creative helm of a house of colour and patterns and a mix of fabrics. At Balenciaga, I was just working with . . . black.”
Few brands have the historic pedigree of Lanvin. The company’s headquarters on 22 Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré are still found on the site where Jeanne Lanvin settled her eponymous label in 1893. Lanvin was a ferocious influence on fashion; she introduced childrenswear, menswear, a sports line, plus fragrance and beauty. But the house, built on this legacy, has changed much in the interim. Until recently, it was defined by the tenure of Alber Elbaz, the charismatic designer who started there in 2001 and left after a fallout with the majority shareholder Shaw-Lan Wang in 2015. His Lanvin became a byword for a wildly sophisticated femininity; he also rebooted the brand’s accessories collections. But the house has since seen a churn of successive designers, shareholders and owners. Shanghai-based Fosun Fashion Group bought Lanvin in February 2018 and it was renamed Lanvin Group. The Lanvin Group, which includes Wolford, St John and Sergio Rossi among its brands, reported revenue of €329mn in FY2024, down 23 per cent over FY2023. Copping’s appointment in 2024 has been a key strategic move to build new momentum. But the challenge, even for a veteran of fashion, is pretty steep.
“Over the past three years, we have deliberately and carefully rebuilt [Lanvin’s] foundation in preparation for a new expression of the brand,” says Siddhartha Shukla, the brand’s deputy CEO. “With Peter’s arrival and a fresh artistic direction, Lanvin returns to its original definitive position as a house of French sophistication and chic.”
Copping’s first show, staged during Paris Men’s Fashion Week in January, offered a taster. It showcased both men’s and womenswear in a palette of gentle neutrals spiked with rich metallics, beaded details, fluid silks, opera coats and gold. The back was a focal point: many of the looks were best seen from behind. And it drew on the heritage silhouettes, embroideries and prints found in the archives of Jeanne Lanvin, whose office is immaculately preserved at 22 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré along with her powder puffs, scent bottles and faux-leopard upholstery.
He shows me pieces from that collection, now hanging on the rails. A shiver of lamé, an evening top punctuated with bold red embroidery, a host of little capes. Deco details are blown up and exaggerated, or reimagined in novel ways. It’s not precious. The looks are formal, but the mood is very day to night. I am taken with a textured leopard-print car coat in alpaca and virgin wool (£4,210) that feels luxurious, but is done in a muted colourway that dulls the Bet Lynch effect. There are several silky fabrics, but “mixed with synthetics” that gives them, says Copping, a more “cool cool”.
Lanvin could be seen as a natural fit for Copping, who has looked at Lanvin at every stage of his career. “I knew the archive pretty well,” he says. “Even while I was at Nina Ricci I was aware of it, and so, when I arrived last year, I felt pretty quickly at home.”
He was a big admirer of the Elbaz period when the brand had a “huge” fanbase. He continues: “[Under Elbaz] the house had a real energy around it. But I found Jeanne Lanvin’s personal style quite inspiring as well.” Lanvin was instrumental in the decorative-arts movement, but her legacy remains somewhat “in the shadows” compared to Elsa Schiaparelli or Gabrielle Chanel, he feels. In her heyday, she had about 1,200 people working in her company. Copping works with rather fewer: the current atelier numbers 17 people, although in busy periods, they get “reinforced”.
Jeanne Lanvin’s house was dedicated to Marguerite, her only daughter, with whom she is depicted on the house logo. Marguerite was the spur behind much of Lanvin’s business and helped foster the familial workplace culture that saw Lanvin team up with her neighbour, Hermès, to provide a canteen for her employees. She also provided a crèche for her staff. “The house is based on the relationship of a mother and daughter and I liked that cross-generational theme,” says Copping. “Obviously, family means different things today – I didn’t want to get hung up on it being a mother and daughter, because that feels a bit last century – but it’s nice to build the idea of a family around the brand.”
Copping’s Lanvin is elegant and ladylike. He is building on the spirit of the founder but doesn’t want “anything to feel too literal”. The pencil skirt (£1,340), long a Copping signature, is a recurring theme. “The skirt has always been quite a key look for me. And I did always see that when we did very feminine collections they were the pieces that just flew commercially.”
I’m reminded of how, years ago, Ruth Chapman, the co-founder of what was then MatchesFashion, would rave about Copping’s Nina Ricci, because he did lots of pretty knitwear that sold exceptionally well. She also loved the fact that the designer “never forgot the waist”. Not everyone is armed with the instinct to flatter, but Copping has always delivered collections that show an appreciation of features that a woman might want to emphasise. He credits his first employer Sonia Rykiel for his love of knitwear (he started working with her in 1994). It’s an essential, he argues. “What are you wearing, Jo?” he gestures to my sweater. “What am I wearing?” He pulls at his.
If his designs have something in common, it’s that his clothes are kind. Britt Lower, the American actress best known for her role in Severance, describes Copping’s Lanvin as “elegant and beautiful with quiet joy”. She went to the show in January, the first Paris show she had been to, with the actor Chiwetel Ejiofor. “My stylist, Rose Forde, told me about Peter’s vision for the collection and when I got the invitation to see it come to life in person, I was thrilled. Peter is so humble and carries a delight inside.”
Early signs from buyers were positive. The press response was good. But Lanvin remains a relative minnow in a sea full of bigger fish. “Despite a challenging macroeconomic context, we are seeing signs of resilience across regions and channels and a new consumer appetite for Lanvin,” says Shukla. “The industry and market response to Peter’s debut and the anticipation as the collection begins to deliver underscore our direction: a compelling counterpoint to the consumer fatigue with over-marketed luxury goods and the saturation of product in the marketplace.”
Things have changed since Copping started in the industry. His career has grown in parallel with the rise of the big luxury houses: he was a right-hand on pre-collections during Marc Jacobs’s tenure at Louis Vuitton. “There are a lot of Instagram clothes out there at the moment I think,” he says of the current landscape. “And yes, OK. But I don’t know if you can sell bags and accessories off the back of all of that.”
Lanvin sales are balanced fairly evenly between accessories and the ready-to-wear label. “To be honest with you, a lot of the money still comes from the trainers,” Copping explains. The Curb sneakers, a chunky low-top sneaker with oversized laces, were released in 2020 and worn by Kid Cudi and Travis Scott. And then there is the DBB1, an extremely minimal low top, considered to be the first luxury sneaker, released in 2006 and since worn by everyone from Microsoft’s Satya Nadella to Ben Affleck and Michelle Obama (who favours a metallic version with a ribbon lace). “We’ve had a lot of success with sneakers that have existed for quite a long time,” says Copping, who hopes to create more synergies with the new collections so that people can find something to wear with their sneakers “that isn’t just a hoodie or a logo shirt”. He’s also working on the prototype of a new sneaker that he will debut at the SS26 show this month.
But the challenges remain significant. The co-ed show will be his first since January. It’s hard to amplify noise around a brand without a constant feed of new collections, or big investment to develop that product or an ad campaign. Copping is sanguine, and brilliantly self-effacing about his limitations. While showing me a blue lining he’s introduced as a brand motif he says, drolly: “This blue is going to bring us to 12 billion, for sure.”
“What was once a dance in fashion is today a race,” admits Shukla. “And I am acutely aware that results at speed are the exclusive measure of success. I am confident in our direction. I believe in the founding vision of Jeanne Lanvin and her insistence on le chic ultime. In our strategic approach to development and growth, we have identified a rhythm for a relatively independent business that is finally steady and consistent. Lanvin’s success might eventually be written as a story of numbers, but it is ultimately a story of rebirth.”
I’m wishing good things for Copping’s Lanvin. He restores your faith that talent, hard work and kindness are not mutually exclusive things. He cares about the consumer. He knows what women want (he might know what men want also, but he’s only had one attempt at that so far). As a story of rebirth it’s one to cinch, not waste.
