Lanvin is by far my favorite design house of the moment. This dress and this outfit from the Spring 2009 collection were the ones that really did it for me. Since then, I’ve been a serious devotee, reading Wikipedia entries and poring over the Alber Elbaz piece in Interview.


Lanvin is the oldest fashion house still in operation. I love the story of its founding; Jeanne Lanvin’s designs for her daughter were sought out by wealthy Parisians. She began making clothes for other people’s children and then started designing dresses for the mothers, too. The main logo Lanvin uses today is an image of a mother and child from the Arpege perfume Lanvin created in honor of her daughter.


Now owned by L’Oreal, the house has experienced a revitalization under designer Alber Elbaz. Elbaz is fascinating. He’s not at all what you would expect from a huge fashion designer. And, from the interviews I’ve read, he seems uncomfortable with his post. Ariel Levy from the Observer wrote “Elbaz believes that his creations are a kind of positive to his negative. If he is melancholy and heavy, his clothes are joyful and weightless. It is his job, as he’s configured it, to make women feel special, something he does not quite feel entitled to himself.” In that article, Elbaz explains that he feels fashion designers are like concierges at fancy hotels. They don’t live the same lifestyles as the patrons. At the end of the day, they go back to reality. Perhaps it is this attitude that keeps Elbaz so centered. In the foreword to a Lanvin coffee table book, he says, “The highest compliment a woman can receive is ‘My God, she looks smart!’ not ‘She’s sexy.’” This is so counter to what we hear from most designers.


For the Fall 2009 collection, Elbaz focused on classic styles. Considering Lanvin pieces are quite expensive, this collection shows that buying a Lanvin piece is not a one-season purchase–it’s an investment in a garment that will be fashionable for as long as you’d like to wear it. To make his collection stand out, he concentrated on ‘classic clothes cut on the bias’ to achieve the appearance of ‘clothes that are hugging you’. Don’t you love that?


The collection was meant to represent ‘real’ clothes for ‘real’ women. Even the concrete runway was sprayed with water to make it look like a sidewalk (poor models). Too bad Lanvin’s clothes are so ridiculously pricey. This real woman will just have to be inspired by images of the clothes.