Bouchra Jarrar, the new artistic director of women’s collections at Lanvin, is in New York this week quietly showing her debut offering for Resort to the American department stores that have long stocked the French brand, designed for the previous 14 years by Alber Elbaz.
Jarrar had just two months to work on the collection, which includes ready-to-wear, shoes, handbags, and jewelry. It’s a much expanded purview from what she did at her eponymous label, launched in 2010, but at a breakfast meeting at the Mercer Hotel this morning, Jarrar was calm and focused, betraying no anxiety about stepping into the shoes left vacant by the well-loved Elbaz.
Back in January, shortly before her last couture collection for her house, which she is shuttering, Jarrar expressed interest in the open spots at Paris’s top design houses. Now that the Lanvin job is hers, she’s setting about building Lanvin’s new “vocabulary,” a word she used frequently during our meeting. Followers of her eponymous label will recognize Jarrar’s clean, minimal lines in the preview pics published here, but the use of such vivid color and romantic floral prints (of orchids, lilacs, and pansies) are both new.
“There was no brief,” Jarrar said. “It’s an open page, and that was important for me.” Still, she’s started out with the basics, pieces she identified as a trench, le tailleur, la robe, and flou, or draping. “Daywear is really important for the house,” she began. “Also to bring my own vision to cocktail and evening, with a sensibility of the 1930s. In that period, the wardrobe and evening dresses were very simple, very pure. It’s a balance between how to be elegant and décontracté—cool or relaxed.”
A silk foulard and a crisp blue cotton poplin button-down feature a logo Jarrar found in the archives. “Jeanne Lanvin always worked on the logo. It was a kind of tribute to her that I wanted to do.” If the fact that Lanvin’s founder was a woman holds resonance for Jarrar, her process is not like that of other female designers who say they make what they need and want for themselves. “It’s not for me; it’s for all women,” Jarrar says of her approach chez Lanvin. “I understand the power of clothes. It’s why I give a lot of attention to proportions; I like to optimize them. I want women to be beautiful, that’s my job.”
Jarrar says there are plans to show the Resort collection during the July couture shows in Paris. A Spring runway show is also in the works; it will be in a new venue and on a different day than it has been in recent seasons.
