"Proportion is fashion." That typically epigrammatic pre-show declaration by Alber Elbaz cut to the quick of a Lanvin collection that was uncharacteristically generous in its proposals for the male body—and commercial with it. Maybe such generosity had its roots in the criteria that creative director Lucas Ossendrijver laid out for the clothes: "Would I wear it? And how would I wear it?" In the past, it's always been about the designers tracing the passage of the Lanvin boy through life, a more objective stance than the one they took today. Shifting the spotlight to the subjective meant one thing: The clothes got more forgiving. That point was made perfectly clear by the fact that the show opened and closed with the same over-scaled double-breasted coat.
There was an almost sloppy quality in the bigger, softer jacket shoulder, the baggier pants, the boxier silhouettes. You got the feeling that hardcore Lanvinites might have issues, but for anyone else, this was a virtual introduction to the brand. Elbaz is a great believer in intuition, meaning it's something of a surprise that it's taken him so long to intuit that the Lanvin offering in the past was a tad exclusive, and not just because it was a "luxury" label. It was refreshing to see breadth, as well as depth, in the collection's jackets and coats. For Elbaz and Ossendrijver, this amounted to a new notion of luxury, options for all, a feast of silhouettes. The biggest were the best, especially a pair of rolled-hem parkas and a languid new cut of trouser. The trimness that countered such pieces looked a little less natural, even as the season's appetite for quilting was honored in a set of fencing-trim items.
The intangible with Lanvin is always its extravagance, which is often only apparent when you check the price tag or step to the till. It was illuminating to listen to Alber Elbaz today as he explained the reason why the new collection's trainers had nine colors instead of the more obvious—and budget-conscious—two. "We wanted to go all the way with things we believed in." And isn't that also the very best that Lanvin could expect of its customers?
