MerkFrench
Lanvin
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Jeanne Lanvin opened her first hat shop on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris in 1889, and what began as millinery soon became one of the defining forces in French fashion. Born in 1867 as the eldest of eleven children, she had apprenticed under Madame Félix from the age of sixteen. The pivot toward clothing came through her daughter Marguerite, born in 1897, for whom Lanvin designed an increasingly sophisticated wardrobe. The attention those clothes received led directly to the creation of a children's line in 1908 - the first in French fashion history - and then to women's wear, menswear, furs, lingerie, and sportswear, making Lanvin one of the first fashion houses to offer a complete lifestyle offering.
The visual identity Jeanne Lanvin built was inseparable from her relationship with the decorative arts. Working with architect Armand-Albert Rateau from 1920, she developed interiors and furnishings in a pure Art Deco register. Her signature shade of blue - a rich cerulean blue inspired by medieval stained glass and Fra Angelico paintings - became the house's defining colour, still used today. The robe de style, a dropped-waist gown with wide pannelled skirts evoking 18th-century court dress, became her signature silhouette: a deliberate counterpoint to the tubular lines that dominated 1920s fashion.
In 1927, Lanvin launched Arpège, a fragrance created by perfumers Paul Vacher and André Fraysse. The name came from her daughter's remark upon smelling it for the first time - "It's like an arpeggio" - and the iconic spherical flacon, designed by Rateau with a gold medallion by Paul Iribe depicting Jeanne and Marguerite, became one of the most recognised perfume bottles of the 20th century. Lanvin died in July 1946; Marguerite, by then Countess Marie-Blanche de Polignac, took over direction of the house.
The modern house passed through several ownership changes before Shanghai-based Fosun International acquired it in 2018. The longest and most critically successful chapter of recent decades was the tenure of Alber Elbaz, who served as artistic director from 2001 to 2015. His work - characterised by draped jersey, embellishment, and an emotional directness - made Lanvin one of the most commercially successful couture houses of the early 2000s. After Elbaz's departure, the house went through a turbulent series of creative directors including Bouchra Jarrar, Olivier Lapidus, and Bruno Sialelli, before Peter Copping took the role in September 2024.
At Auctionist, Lanvin appears across 33 items spanning silk scarves, leather handbags, evening dresses, jewellery, and accessories. The top recorded result is 3,500 EUR for a shoulder bag, with secondary results for handbags and gloves in the 2,000-4,000 SEK range. Items circulate through Bukowskis, Stockholms Auktionsverk, Auktionshuset Kolonn, and Bruun Rasmussen - a spread that reflects the house's broad appeal across fashion and accessories categories.