Lanvin, Oldest French Fashion House, Names a New Designer

A major vacancy in the fashion world has been filled. On Thursday, Lanvin, the oldest French couture house in continual existence, named Peter Copping its new artistic director, an appointment that indicates a potential return to pure designers after a period in which the buzz was focused on content creators.

“Peter Copping’s arrival at Lanvin is an important milestone in the renaissance of one of the great French maisons,” Siddhartha Shukla, the deputy chief executive of Lanvin, said in a news release, adding he was confident that “we will identify a new frontier in fashion and deliver beauty and results in equal measure.”

Mr. Copping, 57 and British, is known for his feminine sophistication as well as his technical prowess, and is a fashion insider’s fashion designer. He has spent the last five years working behind the scenes as head of couture at Balenciaga, where he was instrumental in orchestrating the much celebrated return of couture to that house. (The announcement of his appointment at Lanvin came the day after Balenciaga’s latest couture show, attended by Nicole Kidman and Naomi Watts, among others.) Previously, he had been the handpicked heir to Oscar de la Renta before Mr. de la Renta’s death roiled his succession plans, and the head designer at Nina Ricci.

The new job signals a return to the spotlight for Mr. Copping and Lanvin, which had been without a designer since the departure of Bruno Sialelli more than a year ago, and had been struggling to regain the relevance and success it had enjoyed under its longtime designer Alber Elbaz.

It was Mr. Elbaz who had waked up what he called an industry “sleeping beauty” known more for its Arpège perfume than its fashion, and turned it into a Cinderella story. He left in 2015 after a falling-out with the owner at the time, Shaw-Lan Wang, and died of Covid-19 in 2021.

Lanvin, which was founded by Jeanne Lanvin in 1889, was bought in 2018 by Fosun International, the Chinese trading group that also owned St. John and Club Med. A few years later, it rechristened its fashion arm Lanvin Group in recognition of its flagship brand. In late 2022, the Lanvin Group went public on the New York Stock Exchange, in a SPAC merger that valued it at $1.31 billion.

Still, interim collaborations with boldface names like Future on a newly created line christened Lanvin Lab did little to create excitement around the label, and group revenues were flat in 2023, with Lanvin reporting a 7 percent drop. That may have been why Mr. Shukla went in a more classic direction.

It is now Mr. Copping’s job to prove him right. “Jeanne Lanvin was a visionary of her time whose interests and passions extended far beyond fashion, as do my own,” Mr. Copping said in the news release. A graduate of Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art, he spent a decade working under Marc Jacobs at Louis Vuitton. His Instagram is full of photos of art and interiors rather than fashion or celebrity friends. He will start at Lanvin in September.

Meantime, the top jobs at Givenchy, Dries Van Noten and Chanel are still open, and the game of fashion musical chairs continues.